Crush
by Doctor Harley Quinn
Summary: As a practice run early in their reign of terror, the Maniax snatch two girls off the street. Among their new hostages, Jerome Valeska sees easy pickings. He's not seeing clearly.
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**Crush**

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**Note**: all the usual disclaimers apply. Not my house, not my TV show, I'm not making money off of this, but this fic _is_ my creative work, so do me a favor and don't take/repost/what-have-you without permission. This fic is compliant with Season 2 of Fox's Gotham. Rating for harsh/occasionally insensitive language and... I guess scenes of peril? Threat of bodily and psychological harm? I mean it centers on a pair of girls kidnapped by a gang of killers, things can get a little heavy, but not too much heavier than the show itself, f-bombs excluded.

**Also**: I'd like to profess my _infinite_ love for the characters Claire Temple from the Marvel TV universe and Sara from the film _Creep 2_, both of whom are spiritual predecessors to Isabel in various ways and neither of whom deserve the shit they find themselves putting up with. xoxo enjoy reading!

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**1.**

_I had a dream where you were standing there with a gun up to my head.  
__You were asking how it felt, to which I said "I cannot lie, there is a tingling down my spine. You have revenge, I'll have it too— what's mine is yours, and yours is mine." – _Lucius | **Madness**

Isabel Montalvo had a problem, and that problem took the form of a five-foot-eight crazy man with sharp teeth who might or might not want to _literally_ eat her.

(She looked him in the eye and shuddered. _Make that "might."_ _Definitely "might," no "not" about it._)

She could have avoided this. She wasn't _initially_ the center of his focus, that would be Jane, but she saw him prowling around her tiny, timid friend and saw red. "Hey, fatass Claudio Sanchez!" she'd yelled at him. "Why don't you pick on somebody your own size?" Then, just like that, his attention had switched to her. _Damn it_.

She wasn't even supposed to _be_ here. She and Jane had been in the wrong place at the wrong time: driving back from a venue in the middle of the night, taking a shortcut down a side street, when a body bounced off of their hood. Jane freaked, certain that she'd hit one of the city's many homeless people, she was a murderer, she was going to jail, and she'd stopped immediately and leaped out, followed by a concerned Isabel.

That's when they'd been jumped by the Maniax. Isabel realized who their attackers were pretty early on, as soon as she saw the first one with all that hair as he rounded the car to grab Jane: she'd been following the story with alarmed fascination since their escape from Arkham two days before, and by now their faces were familiar to her. She started to scream, to warn Jane, to yell for help, and then she'd been grabbed from behind by a mountain-sized human, his hand crushed over her mouth. The one with the hair got Jane, and that was about all she was able to see before someone got a blindfold on her and she was duct-taped within an inch of her life, mouth and hands bound.

She was loaded into the back of some vehicle, Jane as well—she identified her by the brush of her hair, the sound of her crying beneath the duct tape—and then they were on the move. The whole thing had taken about a minute.

Isabel was afraid too, but she didn't cry. Fear too often had something of a paralytic effect on her, giving her the appearance of mild catatonia as her mind raced to figure out the quickest way to become _safe_ again. Just then, that meant listening to their captors chatter away in the front seat, raucous and cheerful and as oblivious to the girls trembling in the back as if they were just completing a grocery run.

After a minute, a whine cut through the noise, a slightly lispy voice: "My _shoulder_ hurts."

A throaty chuckle. "I'm not surprised. You got some air, man."

"_I_ never agreed to it! Jerome _threw_ me onto the car."

A lilting voice in response to that, merely inches away from Isabel's ear, made her start badly: "Dobkins, I _told_ you, you'll never learn to stage a convincing fall if you don't _practice_."

She hadn't known anyone was in the back with them, and neither had Jane, if her frightened little gasp was any indicator. _Jerome_, context clues said, and she remembered his mugshot, remembered it because in addition to his being a good-looking redhead, she'd been surprised to see that he was around _her_ age. Eighteen seemed pretty young to be a convicted murderer.

She hadn't seen him on the street when she'd been grabbed—maybe he was the one who'd blindfolded her, since the big guy's arms had kept her pinned till the blindfold was in place—so his presence now was an unpleasant surprise. Still: better him than someone else, she thought. The news said he'd murdered his mother, and yeah, that was bad, but the others' rap sheets included rape and cannibalism (_and God knows what the big guy did_—she couldn't remember, and maybe that meant it wasn't _that_ bad, but she wasn't willing to bet on it). If she'd had to pick one of the guys to be closest to, it would be him.

That didn't mean she was _happy_ about it. Neither was Jane—as soon as Jerome spoke up, she pressed sideways into Isabel, hard, like she was trying to fuse with her. Isabel didn't mind the contact, and wished her hands were free so she could put her arms around her, reassure her.

Dobkins yelped back that he didn't _want_ to be good at stage falls, and the initial person he'd been talking to mocked him (she didn't remember his name, but she could see his face in her mind's eye, the guy with the wild hair), and Jerome dropped out of the conversation entirely, which made her nervous. If he wasn't talking, he was freer to focus on her and Jane, and that couldn't be a good thing.

She was tense for the entire ride, waiting for an unwelcome touch, waiting for a low voice to suddenly say ugly things into her ear. Once or twice, she thought she felt ghost touches, but couldn't be sure—her skin was probably crawling because she was _waiting_ for something to touch it, the way it did when she spotted the occasional spider at home then lost track of it. Ultimately, though, it appeared Jerome wasn't interested in them—at least for now. The ride ended after about half an hour, and the girls were rushed out of the vehicle by rough hands. Isabel stumbled once, and someone hit her in the face for it. Any half-baked plans to try escaping fled her mind at that point—she froze up, the burning pain across her face dredging up old memories, and by the time she roused herself from them, she'd already been muscled onto an elevator.

"Going up!" Jerome's voice was close to her ear again. She wondered if he'd been the one to hit her.

Eventually—after what seemed like a really long time—the elevator stopped. She and Jane were escorted along for about fifty paces, taking several sharp turns, then, with no ceremony, something ripped through the duct tape binding her hands, loosening them. She froze, uncertain, until she heard a door slam and the lock click. Then, slowly, she peeled the duct tape from her mouth, and, when her actions weren't met with another reproving slap, she lifted her hands and ripped off her blindfold.

They were in a long room, low light, dark, stylish décor, no windows. Two doorways, but Isabel didn't immediately investigate: she went to Jane, who was in the process of removing her own blindfold, and hugged her tight.

"Oh, my god," whispered Jane into her shoulder. Her face was wet. "What _is_ this? Is this a kidnapping? Is this because of my dad?"

"I don't know yet," Isabel said. "I don't know what they want, but I know these are the guys that dropped a bunch of people off the roof of the Gotham Times yesterday."

"They did _what?_" Jane demanded, shrill.

Isabel pulled back, though she kept her hands on Jane's shoulders. "You didn't hear? I didn't _tell_ you about that?"

"_No_, you didn't tell me about that!"

"They dressed them in white and spelled out 'Maniax' in red spray paint on their chests before throwing them off the edge! Assholes killed an extra person for _punctuation_."

"Oh, my god, we're going to die," said Jane, her voice reaching dog-whistle pitches as she started to cry again. Isabel pulled her back into her arms, and the two girls held one another tightly for another few moments, until Jane started to calm down.

"You're not crying," Jane said finally.

"No."

"You're angry," Jane said, her breathing slower, almost sleepy.

Isabel _was_ angry. She was angry at these human shitstains for just _stealing_ her, more so for stealing her _best_ _friend_, and she was _furious_ that one of them had hit her. None of this was useful, though, her feelings just futile and childish, so she didn't say any of that to Jane. She just said, "Of _course_ I'm angry; what kind of dipshit spells 'Maniax' with an _x_?"

Jane laughed—and it was maybe more of a hiccup/sob than a real laugh, but it was something, and Isabel felt that angry knot in her chest loosen a little. If she could make Jane feel better about this, then _she_ would feel better, too.

Isabel leaned back and the two exchanged a meaningful look: Isabel's expression read _you good for now?_ And Jane's, answering, reassuring, said _I'm good_. Isabel nodded, let go of her friend, and turned to examine the room in detail.

_Rich people live here_, was her first thought, and then, amended as she noticed that the furnishings looked brand new: _or at least, rich people __**own**__ the place_. The room was a long den, full of heavy, dark wooden furniture, including a sectional couch that covered almost an entire wall, thick red rugs, red accents. Giant plasma TV mounted on the wall. No windows, which she thought was odd, but certainly appropriate if their captors didn't want them knowing where they were.

She checked the door nearest to her first to find it solidly locked. Across the long room, there was another door set into the left-side wall: she opened this to find a bathroom, also with no windows, though there was a mirror. _It's not nothing_, she thought, staring at it, trying to figure out the best way to break it without injuring herself. She could do that, rip some of the upholstery off the couch, wrap one edge of a big piece to protect her hand and then use it as a knife—

She heard a door open, a little squeak from Jane, and Isabel abandoned the plan immediately, hurrying out back into the main area. The wild-haired guy was back, and he was approaching her friend with a look on his face that Isabel did _not_ like.

"Look at you—you're _pretty_," she heard him say.

That's when she lost it, and said what she said about him being a fatass Claudio Sanchez, and he turned on her _fast_.

She backed up as he advanced on her, trying to keep a few feet of space between them, which worked until it didn't: her back hit the wall, and his hands hit the wall on either side of her, blocking her exit.

He showed off his sharp teeth in a menacing grin, and told her "You're _less_ pretty. Still. You look plenty tasty."

_Oh, for the love of_—"Are you the cannibal one?" she asked directly, afraid but focused, _keep his attention away from Jane_. She tried to calculate the odds of actually winning this fight should he attack her: he was actually about an inch shorter than she was, but outweighed her, and he had _crazy_ on his side. _Should've broken the mirror._

His grin, if anything, grew, though his unblinking eyes never left her. "That's right," he said with a little nod. "You heard of me, sweetheart?"

"No _duh_," she said, biting, and regretted it when his expression shifted a little, got angrier, a little more threatening. Quickly, she changed the subject, hoping to distract him from the fact that she'd essentially called him an idiot: "What do you want with us? What are we here for?"

"Right now?" He tilted his head, and she felt the unwelcome touch of his fingers, running down her cheek. "For _fun_."

Her eyes flicked over his shoulder, just for a second, just long enough to look past where Jane was standing, eyes wide in horror, and see that he had left the door cracked open behind him.

She reached up, grasped his shoulder, watched him frown like he was wondering why she wasn't cringing away from him. She tightened her grip and drove her knee as hard as she could into his balls.

He grunted in pain, pitching forward abruptly. She felt his hand scrabble at the side of her head, like he was grasping for a hold in her hair, but his fingertips slid across the short buzz of her undercut, failing to get a good grip, and then she was ducking away from him, breaking through the barrier of his arm and rushing to Jane. She grabbed Jane's hand, yanking her around, and pulled her headlong towards the door.

Which, as they drew within a few feet of it, flew fully open.

Isabel skidded to an abrupt stop, Jane bumping into her and jostling her another step forward. In the doorway stood Jerome.

His hair was damp, the moisture turning it darker red, and his skin was a little heat-flushed along his cheekbones and neck—he'd clearly spent the fifteen or so minutes since they all arrived showering, and now wore a quilted red robe over what looked like bona fide old-person (or rich-person) pajamas. The outfit straddled the line between _cozy_ and _fancy_ and either way seemed an odd choice for an asylum escapee.

He stood in the center of the doorway, making no move to come further into the room, appearing content to observe the tableau before him: the two girls, wide-eyed and frozen, clearly in the midst of making a break for it, and then his compatriot across the room, snarling in pain and gasping for breath. His eyes crawled over the scene, then landed on Isabel. With Jane hiding behind her and the cannibal in no shape to speak yet, she was clearly the spokesperson for the group, and his eyes bored into her, his voice sounding a little like he was trying not to laugh as he asked, "What's going on in _here_?"

Behind Isabel's back, Jane held her hand tight, and Isabel took courage. "Your friend wants to eat us," she spat, the vocal equivalent of a cat arching its back and ruffling its fur to look bigger and more intimidating. Truth was, the odds were stacked _well_ against them, and she knew the likelihood of bluffing her way into a more advantageous position by acting like she had a handle on things was low, but she had to at least _try_.

Jerome looked past her at his colleague, then at her again. He took a step closer (she and Jane instinctively stepped back, a detail she hoped would escape his notice, but given the way his eyes started to shine, she doubted it had), then leaned in a little, and said in low tones, like he was imparting a secret, "Yeah, well… he's a _cannibal._ That's what they _do_."

She felt the need to recover the ground she'd lost in flinching away from him, and dropped Jane's hand (hearing but ignoring her friend's little whimper of disapproval) before taking a step closer, lifting her jaw in defiance, holding his gaze. She was a tall girl at 5'9. He still had a few inches on her.

"Is that why we're here?" she demanded. "To be your friend's _lunch_?"

Bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, Jerome leaned closer, screwing up his face in a disapproving, cartoonish squint. Even more quietly, his tone conspiratorial, he said, "He's _not_ my friend."

He paused after this, watching her, checking for a reaction to this information. She was quick to press her advantage: "Oh, good!" she exclaimed, flashing him a quick smile that didn't go to her eyes. "He's not _my_ friend, either. Want to help me _get_ him?"

Jerome laughed at that, a rather unsettling high-pitched cackle, and then straightened his shoulders and looked past her, towards his colleague. "Greenwood?" he said, his voice ringing out clear, his tone patient, but expectant.

_Right. Greenwood. That was his name._ Isabel didn't feel much better at the reminder. She turned to see that Greenwood had recovered, somewhat, though he was using his forearm braced against the wall to hold him upright. He was glaring at her, didn't bother to look at Jerome as he spat, "The bitch attacked me."

"Hmm," said Jerome, sounding bored, and Isabel carefully reached behind her, grabbing Jane's hand again and backing up a little, turning so she could keep both guys in her peripheral vision at once. "T wants you."

Greenwood paused. His gaze slid away from Isabel and landed on Jerome. "_Which_ T?" he asked, sounding suspicious.

"You know," Jerome said, folding his arms across his chest, lifting one at the elbow so he could cradle his chin in two fingers, peering dramatically up at the ceiling as if in thought, "that is an _excellent_ question." He dropped the pose again in a heartbeat, giving Greenwood a grin that Isabel would describe as _threatening_. "You should go find the answer."

Greenwood wasn't glaring daggers at Isabel anymore—instead, he was scowling at Jerome, an expression that made him look younger, almost petulant, but whoever "T" was, their summons appeared to have enough power over him to force him to shelf his anger towards Isabel. He forced a grin and straightened up from his lean against the wall, spreading his hands theatrically. "_Fine_." He made a point of moving close to the girls on his way out of the room, and even though Isabel was expecting it, when he snarled abruptly into her ear on his way past, she flinched away.

He didn't do anything else, though. Jerome waited patiently, hands clasped behind his back and eyes turned demurely to the floor, until Greenwood left the room, then, springing into action, he turned and closed the door firmly behind him.

"_That's_ better," he announced, and turned again to smile at the girls. After a moment of silence, during which he simply smiled, showing off his pearly white teeth, and the girls huddled together and stared back, their expressions ranging from fearful frown (Jane) to hostile half-glare (Isabel), he gestured abruptly towards the long couch against the wall. "Sit," he encouraged them.

The girls exchanged a quick look. Isabel, ever the leader, decided that if Jerome was bothering to be nice, then she would take advantage of the niceness (at least, as long as it lasted—she was too aware that he could just be leading her into a false sense of security, and that was in fact the most _likely_ outcome, so she resolved not to let her guard down). She answered the question in Jane's eyes by inclining her head towards the couch, and the girls moved as a unit towards it.

Jerome orbited them, never drawing nearer than about three feet away, walking along the edge of the room as they crossed it. He kept his distance until they sank slowly down onto the couch in unison, Jane with both arms wrapped around one of Isabel's, and then he darted across the room at a breakneck run and _jumped_ towards them. The girls jerked back, Jane squeaking in alarm, but he just landed in a crouch on the low coffee table just in front of the couch, the expensive wood easily holding his weight with barely a creak.

He smiled at them, arms looped loosely around his parted knees, and as if totally oblivious to the unsettling effects of his approach, he said, "Why don't you tell me your names." It wasn't a request.

Isabel was quickly getting the impression that showing weakness, showing the _fear_ she felt was just feeding into the egos of her captors (he _had_ to have known how alarming that move was), so she worked her face into a stony scowl and tried hard to keep her voice level as she said, "I'm Isabel."

He nodded, licked his lips, and turned his smiling gaze on Jane. When a few seconds passed in silence, Isabel elbowed her friend, gently, and was rewarded with a small word: "Jane."

"Jane," he greeted her with a nod; "Isabel." He pressed a hand to his narrow chest. "I'm Jerome."

"I know who you are," Isabel said.

His smile, if possible, widened. "You think so? Aw, baby," he said, tilting his head at a sharp angle, "you don't know _nothin'_ yet."

She couldn't quite keep the look of revulsion from crossing her face—she knew so because Jerome laughed, sounding delighted. She thought it best to keep the conversation going, to move on from the fact that she already thought he was _the worst_. "So, what, are you like the _good cop_ in this scenario?" she asked, shifting her shoulder to subtly obscure Jane a little more from his view.

His smile disappeared in favor of a thoughtful look. "Uh—maybe." At her skeptical glance, he leaned in a little and confessed, "I've never _been_ the good cop before."

"Huh. How do you like it?"

He made a high-pitched, contemplative noise. "I'll reserve judgment for now. Are you sisters?"

Isabel looked pointedly at where Jane was clutching her hand, Jane's white skin contrasted against hers, which was considerably browner, and then back at him. "No."

He held up his hands, _don't shoot_. "I'm just askin'. You never know these days, what with the… decay of the nuclear family and all." He cleared his throat. "So what're _these_?" He reached out, flicked the purple wristband Isabel was wearing with the tip of his middle finger.

"We were at a show tonight," she said, reluctant.

"Really? Who was playing?"

Her brow furrowed, _you can't be serious_, and when he met her look with an expression of innocent curiosity (one that she didn't trust for a second), she felt her own features flatten with irritation and impatience. "Queens of the Stone Age," she told him, though her tone made it sound more like _fuck you._

He raised his eyebrows. "Queens of the Stone Age, huh? Does that mean you like son-of-a-bitch redheads?"

Isabel decided she'd had enough of his line of questioning. She pulled out of Jane's grip, leaning forward, slapping her hands down on the table on either side of Jerome's velveteen house shoes, and, tilting her head back to look him straight in the eye, glaring, she said, "_What_ are we doing here? What do you want with us?"

"Whoa, whoa, hey," he said, expression morphing immediately to one softer, of concern. (She didn't trust _this_ one, either.) He shifted, moving his feet to the floor, knees knocking hers even as she moved quickly back in response to his sudden proximity. He settled on the edge of the table, leaning close. "Easy. _Easy_. Listen." He reached forward to grab her hand—she tried to jerk back at the touch, but he just brought his other hand in to reinforce his grip, holding hers so tightly between his that she couldn't pull it away.

"You two were a practice run," he told her, looking her soulfully in the eyes. "One of several. That's all. It wasn't personal."

"A practice run," she repeated, her fingers loose, refusing to clasp his hand the way he was clasping hers. "So… practice, if the practice is _over_, then we should be allowed to go. Right?" She didn't believe that, but he was talking bullshit, and unless she pushed, she'd never get to the bottom of… whatever all _this_ was.

He hummed, a soft sound, as he looked thoughtfully upwards. "_Well_."

_And there it is, _she thought, her eyes sliding shut, just for a second. There was more to this than whatever "practice run" load he was trying to sell her. _Obviously_ there was more.

Jerome was talking again. "The _shot_-_callers_ think it'd be good to have a few… spare parts in the mix. You know how it is—everything's going good, you're establishing your criminal empire, nothing but smooth sailing… and then suddenly, the police roll up and you're in need of hostages." He grinned his wide grin at her again, like he expected it to disarm her (or frighten her). "Best to have the hostages on standby instead of gambling on being able to grab a few from the mix, you know?"

Isabel didn't know. She tried pulling her hand out of his, and this time he let her, clapping his palms instead to his spread knees.

"At least, that's the idea. Now, _me_? I like winging it, but ultimately, I'm not in charge, so…" He clicked his tongue against the side of his mouth and shrugged a little dramatically, _what are you gonna do._

"So we're you're… live-in hostages?" she tried. It didn't sound any better out loud.

He gave her a single finger-gun. "Atta girl. You got the idea."

"And the fact that we're your human shields is supposed to be, like, insurance against us getting raped, or eaten, or _murdered_?"

He wrinkled his nose. "Not _good_ insurance. We can always grab more girls off the street, if we need to."

"That's… great. That's reassuring."

"Hey," he said consolingly. "Consider the bright side: in a fight between you and Greenwood? I'm rooting for _you_."

"Really?" she asked, and when he nodded, looking earnest, she went for broke: "All right, then put your money where your mouth is and give me a knife."

Jerome grinned, and that grin turned almost immediately into another of those unsettling high cackles.

"I'm serious," she argued, leaning forward a little again, intentionally catching his eye. "He might be shorter than me, but he outweighs me, and he's _crazy_. Plus, I kicked him in the nuts, and there's, like, no _way_ he's not gonna hold a grudge over that. If you'd rather see me win out over him, I need an advantage."

His laughter faded, though the manic grin remained, and he stared at her, not blinking. She nodded, just a twitch of her head, encouraging, and said, emphatically, "Give me a _knife_."

He narrowed his eyes just a touch. "You always cause this much trouble, or is that a… _recent_ development?"

"Always," she said without missing a beat.

Now, it was his turn to nod, his smile taking a turn from _devious_ into _outright wicked_. He stared for just a beat longer than was comfortable, and then, abruptly, he stood. "Know what, Trouble? I'll think about it. In the meantime—might I suggest that the two of you get some sleep? We've got some _busy_ days ahead. Who _knows_ what we'll need you to do? You don't want to be at a disadvantage from the start."

"Thanks for the advice," she grumbled, leaning back to give him a little more room to get by.

He headed towards the door, turning after a few paces, walking backwards. "Nice meeting you, Isabel. _Jane_," he said, shooting a particularly malevolent look over her shoulder at her friend.

She waited until he'd actually left the room, the lock clicking behind him, before muttering, "Wish I could say the same, asshole."

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**A/N** \- Dustin Ybarra is cute and did a great job as Greenwood. Too bad Isabel hates him, lol.

Gotham is a _fabulous_ sand box, Jerome is a wonderful awful character, and I'm looking forward to continuing this! Love me some feedback, so drop me a line if you feel so inclined. See you soon :)


	2. 2

**note **\- I heard from a few of you that you haven't watched Gotham or aren't caught up but are reading anyway bc you like my work, and 1. that is tremendously flattering, thank you and 2. consider maybe watching some Jerome clips off Youtube just to get a grasp of who we're dealing with? Specifically, for this chapter, look up the bit where he plays Russian Roulette with Greenwood, because it's mentioned in the text but won't make much sense if you haven't seen it, plus that clip gives you a pretty good understanding of the group vibes and Jerome's whole deal specifically. And if you _have_ seen Gotham, you should go watch it anyway, because it's only two minutes long and it's _wonderful_. PSA over, enjoy the chapter!

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**2.**

_Cheer up, tune it out  
__Take your mask off, have a shot  
__Are you a sick kid or a trick?  
__It's gonna mess you up_ – Autolux | **Soft Scene**

"Isabel," Jane said softly. "Stop pacing."

"Can't."

"You're putting me on edge."

"Sorry," Isabel said, but she made no move to stop moving back and forth long-wise down the room, fingers knotting together, then unknotting, then knotting together again. Jane sighed, then sat up from where she'd been lying on the couch, trying unsuccessfully to fall asleep.

"So what's on your mind?" she asked gamely.

"Okay," Isabel said. "So they obviously don't know who you are. That's leverage, right? I mean, if we _tell_ them, maybe we can turn this from _death trap in the making_ to _kidnapping for ransom_."

"Oh, _absolutely_ not," Jane said. When her friend turned to shoot her a confused look, she gestured to indicate the room in general. "The wooden pieces are _all_ mahogany. The rest are designer, and not _one_ of them costs under five grand. Whatever these guys are after? It's not money." Her voice, so timid and soft around the Maniax, was stronger now, slightly lower in pitch, unfalteringly confident. She knew this stuff, had grown up surrounded by it.

Isabel scraped her nails along her undercut, eyes going distant in thought. "So they obviously already have it."

"That, or someone's bankrolling them."

"Publicity, then," Isabel decided, and Jane pointed at her with a sleepy wink, _you've got it_. "Okay, then… we need to keep them in the dark. They _can't_ find out who you are."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking," Jane said, ignoring the painful swoop of her stomach, the _fear_ as the reality of her situation hit her again for the twentieth time this hour.

"Yeah… yeah, that'd be a huge get for them, murdering the daughter of Coil's CEO."

"God," Jane sighed, rubbing her hand over her tired eyes, "at this point, he'd probably _thank_ them for it."

"Still. People would talk, and that's what these guys seem to want, right?"

"Yes, Isabel, thank you for reminding me that _my murder_ would tick all these guys's boxes," Jane said dryly, leaving her hand over her face.

"Shit," Isabel said, and paused awkwardly. "I'm sorry. You know I don't always—"

Jane dropped her hand, gave her friend a quick smile, more to reassure her than because she actually felt like smiling. "It's fine. You're just trying to figure a way out of this, I know. It's like I can _hear_ you thinking."

Isabel paused in her pacing, tilted her head back as far as it would go, and groaned.

"I cannot _believe_ you asked that guy for a _knife_," Jane added.

"You miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take," Isabel fired back, only half-sarcastic. "And anyway, he and Greenwood actually seemed to dislike each other, and these guys are from Arkham, which means they don't play by the usual rules—to put it _mildly_. I might get lucky."

"Or you might get _stabbed_, because you're introducing a _knife_ to the mix."

"_Please_," she scoffed. "You know damn well there are knives in play already—and guns, and like, flamethrowers, and probably all sorts of weird scary shit that I can't even _imagine_. I have to try to at least even the field."

Jane watched her friend move back and forth through the room for a few more seconds, and then, very quietly, she pointed out, "If you stab him, the rest of them will kill you."

Isabel froze mid-step, then, a moment later, visibly shrugged the comment off, resuming her pacing. "Yeah, well, we'll burn that bridge when we get to it," she mumbled. After a second, she turned back to her friend, almost accusingly: "Why aren't you a mess right now?"

She had a point. Of the two of them, Jane was most likely to be racked with anxiety at any given moment, paralyzed by fear of the violent, the strange, and the unknown—three things Gotham City specialized in. It was part of why she and Isabel were so close—Jane needed someone to look after her, and Isabel needed someone to look after.

"I don't know," Jane admitted after a second. "Too tired, maybe? Or maybe just too burned out." She scrubbed her hands over her eyes again, still distantly aware of the danger, but without any of their captors actually present, she found that the usual fear had taken a backseat to more immediate needs.

It helped that Isabel was around. She'd already put herself between Jane and the bad guys several times tonight and come out on top each time. It made Jane feel like maybe this would turn out better than expected.

Isabel nodded, but her expression was distant. To call her attention back (Jane knew that look, she knew it meant Isabel was running through worst-case scenarios, a tendency of hers that stretched her thin and made her tense), Jane asked a question she'd been wondering for a while: "Do you think Jerome will help us?"

The question got instant results: Isabel scoffed, looking over at her, her expression scornful. "I think _Jerome_ is playing games," she said.

Jane frowned. "What do you mean?"

"There is something _deeply_ not right about that boy," Isabel declared. "He looks like the kind of guy that pulls wings off of butterflies."

"No argument there, but if you think he's screwing us, then why are you giving him the time of day?"

Isabel sighed, raking her fingers through her hair. "I have to negotiate with _someone_, and so far, creepy or not, I like him best for it. I mean, what's my other option? _Greenwood?_"

At the mention of the cannibal's name, a cold chill ran down Jane's spine. The memory of the way he'd looked at her before Isabel had intervened on her behalf was an unwelcome one, and she tried to shake it off fast, before it could really get its hooks in her. "Fair point," she muttered.

"Not to get all Stockholm-y," Isabel continued, "but if we can make Jerome like _us_ more than he likes the rest of his crew… I don't know." She stopped pacing again, resting her hands on her hips, her expression thoughtful.

Jane practically recoiled at the idea. "I don't _want_ him to like us," she protested. The truth of it was, as frightened as she felt of Greenwood, something about Jerome spooked her almost as much. Maybe it was the red edges of his eyes, or the way he moved, like something simultaneously predatory and unnatural. Whatever the reason, she felt certain that _he_ was as much of a threat as Greenwood, and the thought of further contact with him…

"Yeah, I'm not thrilled about it either," Isabel said absently. "But until we find someone else saner than he is… and anyway, we're not part of his target demographic, which is more than I can say for at least two of the others."

Jane didn't want to ask. She really didn't. She made herself do it anyway. "What did he do again?"

Still lost in thought, Isabel sounded unbearably casual when she responded. "Killed his mom."

Jane drew in a breath through clenched teeth. "Jesus."

"Yeah, well, I'll take that over raping or eating girls our age; the odds seem just a _bit_ better. Hell, he might have even had a good reason."

"Isabel!" Jane exclaimed, scolding. "_God_."

"Oh, like _we're_ strangers to shitty parents," Isabel said, growing defensive. "_Please_. We can't afford to get pearl-clutchy about this, at least not before we get the whole story."

"Sure, but we can't afford to assume that asshole _murder_ boy was _justified_, either," Jane said, in the willful tone she only ever felt safe to use with Isabel. It got her friend's attention, the way it usually did, and after a second, Isabel looked abashed.

"You're right," she admitted. "I know. I'm just trying to make this easier."

"I know," Jane said, yielding in turn. "I just… I don't think having Jerome on our side will end up any better than trying to make it out of this alone."

Isabel frowned, shook her head. "What do you…? I mean, he's obviously got power within the group, he has access to weapons, he could—"

"He could use the fact that we want stuff from him against us," Jane interrupted. "He could pretend he's going to help us just to like… lure us into something. Or just make us cooperate. Bottom line is we have no reason to think he'll take our side, and about a hundred to think he'll screw us. I don't want to open myself up to that. I don't want _you_ to, either."

Isabel was shaking her head, just a little, but enough that Jane knew her words weren't going very far. Knowing how stubborn her friend was, knowing she couldn't do much more to change her mind, Jane made herself relax, laying her head back down onto the couch and stretching out a hand. "It'll keep till tomorrow," she said, trying her best to sound soothing instead of just scared.

Isabel seemed to want to say something to that—_how can you know that_, maybe, or something along those lines, but she restrained herself. "Come on," Jane added, a little encouraged that Isabel wasn't shooting her down anymore. "I'm tired but I'm scared to sleep alone."

"I'm not sleepy yet," Isabel replied automatically, chewing on the edge of a fingernail, but after a minute, she seemed to reconsider, and turned to come over to the couch. "I'll sit with you, though. Make sure nobody sneaks up."

"You're a balm to my wounded soul," Jane said, giving her a small smile that she was sure wasn't convincing. Isabel shot her a dry look in response, reaching over her to a red throw blanket draped across the top of the couch and unfolding it over her. The blanket was soft plush and had a pleasant heaviness to it, and despite their dire circumstances, Jane sighed at the feel of it weighing on her body, more aware than ever of the weariness she was feeling. It had been a long day and a late night to _start_ with, and now, drained by the danger of the evening, she wanted nothing more than to sleep.

Once Jane was draped in the blanket, Isabel settled at her feet, pulling her legs up beneath her and watching the door with a sort of testy wariness. Jane bent at the middle so she could touch her friend's hand, and told her, "You need to sleep, too."

"Mm. Not right now. You rest, we'll talk about… all this—" she gestured vaguely at the room around them—"later."

Jane shook her head, but she knew her well. Isabel wasn't going to sleep until she was damn well ready, no matter what anyone said. Jane arguing would likely just make her _more_ determined to keep a watch, so she just curled up, reassured by the feeling of her blanketed feet pressing against Isabel, and eventually, she was able to numb the horror of the day long enough to drift to sleep.

* * *

Jerome was having a _good day_, and he'd only been up for an hour.

But oh, _what an hour_. After fancy French omelets for breakfast, over various weaponry, he'd finally put an end to the so-called _power struggle_ between himself and Greenwood. All he'd had to do was accept a twenty percent chance of death (and then a twenty-five percent chance, and then a _thirty-three_ percent chance—but those were all lower than _fifty_ percent chance, which was what he'd forced Greenwood to face, and he'd bet correctly that Greenwood had been too much of a coward to accept those odds).

He was the boss. Theo _said_ so, and more than that, Jerome had made sure everyone _knew_ it. _Man, what a rush._

Now that _that_ had been taken care of, and he had a couple of hours to burn before their _event_ later today, his thoughts turned towards the girls they'd nabbed the night before.

There was Jane: tiny, blonde, huge blue eyes. Skinny jeans, rainbow t-shirt, black tattoo down her bicep. _Paralyzed_ by her terror, which was a funny thing to watch. All in all, she wasn't all that interesting.

Isabel… _Isabel_ was interesting.

She was a tall girl, strong-looking—he didn't envy Greenwood the blow he'd taken to the family jewels. Last night, as Jerome was falling asleep, he'd wondered how her right hook might feel: she didn't seem the kind of girl to pull it out of fear of pain. _That_ was interesting. She had light brown skin and silky black hair, except where it had been shaved down over her left ear, showing off a line of silver piercings. No visible tattoos. Wearing a white tank top and a black army jacket over cutoff black shorts and ankle-high Doc Martens patterned with roses—and if the shorts were a little unusual for September, she'd said they'd come from a show. Venues got hot, and anyway, that just meant her legs were on full display, and she had _nice_ legs.

She'd had the balls to ask _him_ for a knife. Wasn't _that_ great?

Jane was her weak spot, that much was obvious from the various ways she'd shifted her body to block her friend from his view, and Greenwood's. He'd been about eighty percent sure that Jane _wasn't_ her sister when he'd asked (they could've shared just a mother or just a father, but they looked so drastically different that he doubted it), but still, the vibes had been there, that single-minded protectiveness, the way she'd been willing to put herself in the line of fire if it meant detracting their attention from the one she was shielding. _That_ was a useful piece of information.

He stopped in the kitchen, setting the sword on the counter and grabbing a box of leftover pizza from last night out of the fridge. When he straightened up and closed the door, Theo was standing there.

Jerome didn't jump, just leaned against the fridge and tilted his head and gave him a cool, interested look.

"Jerome," Theo said, flashing his polished, practiced, politician smile. "Congratulations."

Jerome smiled, flourished his free hand, made a bar of his arm across his stomach and bowed over it. "_Thank_ you," he said, putting an artificial deepness into his voice.

He felt pretty good about Theo, all things considered. Theo had broken him out of the joint, was interested in giving him the tools to do exactly what he wanted, and seemed to be both amused by and supportive of his ambitions, all while clothing him and feeding him and housing him in this cushy place. _Sure_, it was because the man had an ulterior motive, but honestly, Jerome would've felt worse about him if he _hadn't_. This way, their interactions had the feeling of an exchange: it was _fair_. Jerome didn't owe him anything other than what he would already freely give. _That_, he could be happy about.

Theo's eyes went to the pizza box in Jerome's hand; he nodded towards it. "Is that for the girls you took last night?"

"Well, I thought they might be hungry," Jerome answered, the corners of his mouth dropping in cartoonish thoughtfulness.

"Indeed they might. It's very kind of you to think of them."

Jerome grinned. _Kindness_ didn't figure into it, and despite Theo's placid face, he damn well knew it. Just one more reason to like him.

Theo's expression shifted into something closer to solemnity, and he stepped closer, putting a hand on Jerome's shoulder. "Look in on them if you like. Just be sure not to _tell_ them anything, hmm?"

Jerome raised his eyebrows, inquisitive. He knew the reasoning behind the instruction; he just wanted to hear Theo say it.

Theo obliged. "We both know it's unlikely that they'll survive. Even _more_ unlikely that they'll manage to escape—but still. No use taking chances, and _anonymity_ in this is key for me. You understand, yes?"

Jerome smiled, beatific. "I understand."

Theo returned his smile, clapping him once on the shoulder. "Good boy." He nodded at the pizza box. "Go feed the girls. Keep them happy."

Jerome snapped into a quick salute. "Aye, aye, Captain!" he boomed, the mocking in his tone outweighed by the theatricality of it, and as Theo snorted, mildly amused, he slipped past him, grabbed his sword and headed towards the den where they were keeping the girls.

They were awake when he unlocked the door, a bit to his disappointment—huddled together on the couch, the way they were when he left them. He paused just past the threshold, kicking the door closed behind him as he used his sword hand to flip the lid of the pizza box open. He grabbed a cold slice (French omelets might be fancy, but he was a growing boy, and a couple of eggs wouldn't exactly hold him for the day), folding it in half and shoving it into his mouth before venturing over to them and tossing the box down on the table in front of them.

They both stared at it. Isabel, after a second, raised suspicious eyes to him.

"It's not poisoned," he reassured them. His mouth was full, and her expression turned confused.

He lifted a finger, _wait a second,_ and grabbed the crust of the pizza with his other hand, pulling it free, chewing the mouthful he'd managed to bite off and swallowing before repeating himself. "It's not poison-ed," he repeated, emphasizing each syllable.

Her suspicion didn't fade, but Jane reached past her, snatching up a slice. Jerome chuckled, the sound exploding from his chest, _well, look at the cojones on the fraidy-cat._ Isabel was more reluctant to follow up, looking suspiciously between him and the pizza, but when he continued to work on his piece with relish, she slowly reached for one as well.

For a minute or two, they all ate in companionable silence. Predictably, Isabel was the one to break it.

"Your friend… the weaselly one, Dobkins? He was sitting there watching us when we woke up."

"Ooh," Jerome said, raising his eyebrows like she'd said something salacious.

She tossed her pizza crust into the box and leaned forward, elbows on her bared knees. "He's the rapist, right?"

"_The_ rapist," he repeated, slowly, then in a rush: "That's taking a pretty limited view on things, don't you think?"

"He was the only one who the news mentioned had a history of it," she said, not breaking eye contact with him. "He scampered as soon as I said something to him, but… it was still unsettling."

Jerome shrugged, pulling a dismissive face. "Dobkins is harmless."

"Sure. Right _now_. He seemed passive, out of it. Watch him hit a manic phase, though. He could be dangerous."

Jerome squinted at her. "Are you currently taking a psych one-oh-one course, by any chance?"

"No, I just know a thing or two about mental illness," she said steadily. "You given any more thought towards letting me have a knife?"

Jerome wondered if she knew how much she was making him like her. The sheer audacity of asking your _kidnapper_ for a weapon—it pointed to the kind of mind that made things interesting, one that was either really bold or really stupid. (Given that she'd picked a fight with Greenwood within ten minutes of having her hands freed, probably a mix of both.)

"No, I've just been sleeping," he answered. It was a lie. Before Theo had approached him in the kitchen, he _had_ eyeballed the knife rack, had considered wrapping the butcher's blade in a dishcloth and delivering it to her along with the pizza. He'd come down on _no_, though, at least for now, because there was a _lot_ going on that his co-escapees could be useful for, and as funny as it'd be to watch her stab them over and over and _over_ again, he wanted to see how Theo's plans would play out.

It was still an option, though. _Especially_ if he could trick her into thinking he was on her side—now, _that_ would be funny, given how transparently dead-set against him she was, despite having evidently chosen him as her go-to ambassador for the Maniax. (After all, he was the only choice. Those other guys were just a _mess_.)

She wasn't happy with that answer. It was fun for him to watch her face—it was an expressive one despite her substantial efforts to keep it under control, betrayed exactly what she was thinking, how she was feeling about _him_. She did _not_ like him.

"_Dobkins_ could've been _Greenwood_," she argued. "He could've cut off a chunk of me and had it in the deep fryer before I even woke up."

"In that case, what good would a _knife_ have done you?" he posited, raising his eyebrows, _gotchya_. She just looked thoroughly unimpressed, and he headed to the sectional part of the couch, scooping up the TV remote on the way. "Anyway. You're massively overestimating Greenwood's ability to be subtle. About anything," he added, and dropped into a full-body sprawl (or at least, as much of his body as he could fit) on the sectional a couple of feet away from them, laying the sword down beside him and turning the TV on.

He pretended to be completely oblivious to the way the girls were staring at him, clearly confused by his making himself at home. After a moment, as he fitted his arm beneath his head to pillow it, Isabel said, "Um."

He didn't move his head, just his eyes, looking sideways towards her, guileless. _What?_

"Are you, uh… sticking around?"

"Oh, you don't mind, do you?" he asked easily. "It's a few hours before I have to do anything, and the rest of the crew, they're, uh, not _great_ at the hygiene thing—and you can _forget_ about a stimulating conversation. I'd much rather stay here for a while."

His social situation wasn't as dire as he was making it out to be—sure, he didn't want to spend more time around his colleagues than he _had_ to, but he had other options. He _could_ theoretically go see what Babs and Tabitha were up to, but he was currently torn between admiring the two women (as much as he could admire anyone, anyway) and feeling wary of them. Both had a certain reckless vibe that was fun to _watch_, like hyenas loose on a playground, but he wasn't exactly keen to put his _own_ fingers near the hyenas' mouths, so to speak. For now, as long as the civilian girls held his interest, he'd rather be around them. He was having fun right now, giving that _good cop_ angle a spin.

"…sure," Isabel said at length, sounding very _not sure_. "All right, cool." She didn't sound like she thought it would be cool.

Jerome pointedly didn't smile, doing his best to appear completely disinterested in the girls on the other side of the couch. He channel surfed until he found something appropriately mindlessly violent, then settled in and pretended to watch.

* * *

**A/N** \- still largely setup- things don't start getting hairy till the next chapter, but it's important to have a good foundation. I thoroughly appreciate the likes and feedback, it's lovely to get some interest so early on, and nice to see familiar names! I'll have another chapter for you next week!


	3. 3

**3.**

_Everybody thinks that you're a star  
__But underneath I see just what you are  
__...you don't know I'm just as bad as you. - _Marina | **You**

Isabel was on edge—which, big surprise, she'd been tense and angry from the moment they'd been snatched up, with the exception of the few hours she'd spent asleep, too worn out to maintain her rigid watch. She'd regretted it when she woke up to find that Dobkins had somehow managed to creep into the room without her hearing and was squatting opposite the coffee table, watching them intently.

She'd managed not to give in to her first, ruder impulse, and instead had just whispered fiercely, "Go away." It had been sufficient; Dobkins scattered like she'd screamed at him. Even so, refreshed by sleep and startled by the unexpected company, she'd been up and pacing again in a flash.

And now Jerome had brought them pizza, and settled in at the end of the couch like he had nothing better to do than watch daytime television alongside two kidnapped girls.

He was up to something, she was sure of it.

Fortunately, she had a plan—or at least, she knew _what_ she wanted to do, even if she wasn't quite sure how to go about it yet.

She was sitting on the couch between him and Jane—closer to Jane—and watching him, trying to decide how best to navigate the issue, when he spoke out of nowhere: "Well. _I'm_ bored."

"Then change the channel," Isabel said automatically, but he just hummed his disagreement and turned his head to them abruptly, not bothering to sit up from his slouch.

"Let's play a game," he suggested.

Isabel tilted her head and narrowed her eyes, studying the devious slant of his brows, the grin that never seemed to leave his face for long. "Is this the part where you ask me if I've ever seen the Saw movies?"

"_Have_ you ever seen the Saw movies?" he asked, mirroring her by cocking his head to the side, pulling on an inquisitive frown.

"_No_," both girls lied in unison.

He sat up abruptly, lifted his hands, flapping them once in a quick _shoo_ motion. "Aw, it doesn't matter. Not the kind of game I'm talking about, anyway." He paused, seeming to reconsider, then shook his head decisively. "Maybe later. _Let's_ play two lies and a truth."

The girls exchanged glances. "I thought the game was two truths and a lie," Jane ventured after a moment.

Jerome, beaming, shook his head. "More fun my way."

When the response he got was less than enthusiastic, the girls shooting him wary looks, he turned fully towards them and pulled his legs up, crossing them and leaning forward like a kid at a sleepover. "Come on," he coaxed. "It's easy. Look, look—I'll start." He rolled his eyes thoughtfully up to the ceiling, and after a moment's consideration, he said, "_Okay_. Three things." He counted them off on his fingers: "I was born in Wichita. I once saw a man pass out into a bonfire. I can't juggle."

Finished, he clapped his hands to his knees and looked expectantly at them. "So which one's the truth?"

Isabel, abruptly, decided to play along. This could be—probably _was_—the gateway to something terrible, but the game seemed innocuous enough, as was the information he was offering. She didn't see the harm in just _this_—she'd just have to keep an eye out to make sure it didn't get out of hand.

She turned towards him as well, mostly blocking Jane from his view and mirroring his pose, legs up and crossed, hands on her knees. Jerome raised his eyebrows and asked, "Well?"

"Shh," she said. "I'm thinking." His eyes brightened, he seemed pleased that she was game, but she barely noticed, going distant in thought. The juggling one had to be a lie, she remembered he'd grown up in a circus—certainly at least as a bored kid he'd figured it out. By that same measure, his traveling circus background, he wasn't necessarily _from_ Gotham, so—

She looked him in the eye and said, "Wichita."

He made a loud, grating sound, something akin to a game show's _wrong_ buzzer, and said, "Born here, actually."

"Were not."

"Was too," he said, looking pleased to be contradicted. "Circus comes back once a year. This—" he tilted his head, lifted his hand, fingers splayed to indicate the room, the city beyond—"is my hometown." He stayed posed for a moment, basking in his own drama, then snapped out of it, dropping his hands back to his knees to nag at her again. "C'mon, c'mon, _c'mon_. Two more options, what's your guess?"

She rolled her eyes. She stuck by her logic about the juggling, so she just said, "How long did the guy stay in the fire?"

"Had to be at least three minutes."

"He didn't _wake up_?"

"He was an acrobat. They party." He looked past her at Jane, and kindly clarified: "He was _incredibly_ drunk."

"And you were around to watch this, and you didn't _pull him out_?" demanded Isabel.

His gaze flashed back to hers, his eyes wide and innocent. "I wanted to see what would happen." She didn't ask what had happened (she was morbidly curious, but she knew Jane would flip out if she dared), but she didn't need to, because his stare grew distant and, almost reverently, he said, "He survived, but it wasn't pretty. He was still screaming when they loaded him into the ambulance."

Jane made a soft, distressed little sound behind her. It snapped Jerome out of wherever he'd gone, and he returned his attention directly to the girls. "_So_, second try, that's a sixty-six, that's a failing grade," he noted, twisting his face into a frown.

She wasn't going to ask him what a _failing grade_ meant; she wasn't going to give him the opening. Instead, she held up an index finger. "I was on a roller derby team in high school."

The statement had the desired effect. Instead of focusing on her _failure_, he licked his lips and leaned slightly forward, attentive, clearly thrilled that she was playing along. Hurriedly, to keep his focus, she rattled off two more: "I've never been drunk. I've never left the country." Three fingers up, she watched Jerome, awaiting his verdict.

She watched as the shine in his eyes faded, like she'd drained it from him. _Shit. What now?_ He didn't leave her to wonder long—after a moment, he said, sounding wounded, "You know, if you don't want to play, you could just _say_ so."

Her eyes widened slightly. "What?"

"The game's called _two lies and a truth,_" he said impatiently, "not _three half-assed lies_."

"You think I'm lying?"

"I _know_ you're lying. You're a terrible liar."

She glared, insulted. "Am not."

"Isabel," he said, his voice warm with sympathy, "it's not your fault. You're cute, so no one ever told you—but yeah, you're absolute garbage at it. You've got a whole bag of tells."

She felt a flush of heat in her face, wasn't sure if she was more embarrassed or angry. "Shut up," she mumbled.

"Look, I'm not gonna _make_ you play—"

"Yeah, because _that_ would be out of character."

"—just _don't…_. lie to me." He stared at her, intent, not blinking, and she found she couldn't quite break his gaze, afraid of… she didn't know what, exactly. Her gut feeling, though, told her that shrinking away would be a bad idea.

"Maybe," she said slowly, thinking hard, "maybe I want something different." Jerome narrowed his eyes, his head taking on a curious tilt, though he stayed silent, letting her puzzle her way through it. "Maybe I want to play something a little higher-stakes. A game where I actually stand to gain something."

"Or lose it?" Jerome suggested lightly, looking like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

"That's generally what 'high-stakes' implies, yeah."

"What are you hoping to win? Yeah, yeah, a knife, I know," he added even as she opened her mouth to answer, nodding along to the idea. He asked next, "And what are you offering to _lose_?"

It was hard to keep looking at him. He still wasn't blinking, and his pupils had gone large and black, although she couldn't put her finger on exactly when _that_ had happened. Her instincts were kicking in, however, helping her to sound slightly bored, above all _not afraid_ as she countered with, "What do you _want_?"

"_No._" The objection came from behind her, from Jane, and even as she jumped, Isabel kicked herself for being surprised in the first place. This was _exactly_ the sort of thing Jane told her she was afraid of, Isabel trying to bargain her way to some advantage and getting outmaneuvered. _Except that won't happen unless I __**let**__ it happen,_ she thought, turning to argue with her friend, but Jane, probably seeing her intention on her face, shook her head vehemently. "No!" she repeated. "We're not doing this."

"_We're_ not," Isabel allowed. "_I_ might."

"You will _not._ We _talked_ about this; you can't trust him!"

Isabel glanced back at Jerome, slightly worried he might take the opportunity to take offense, but he was watching them both intently now, elbow perched on the back of the couch and chin cupped in his hand, and as she looked at him, he opened up his free hand in a loose gesture, _she's got a point._

Isabel glared at him. _You're not helping._ He just smiled—unlike with the usual performative grin he wore, this one seemed more genuine, as though he was truly amused by her irritation—and she turned back to Jane. "We can't afford to give up the chance at an opportunity," she muttered, in low tones, as if she had a chance at stopping Jerome from hearing.

"Uhh, yeah," Jane said, not bothering to keep her voice down, clearly angry, "we _can._ It's a gamble that might leave you worse off than you started; I'd say maintaining solid ground is the winning move here, now, you're not going to make any _fucking_ bets with this guy!"

Jerome cackled. "Janey, Janey, _Janey!_" he crowed, sounding half-scolding, half-admiring. "The _mouth_ on you. I _love_ it."

"Leave her alone," Isabel snapped, whipping around to glare at him, ready to pop him if she needed to.

"Leave _her_ alone," Jane said, catching Isabel's arm as if she could hold her back. Jerome was lifting both his hands, showing them his palms, _I surrender,_ when the door opened.

Isabel recognized the woman who came in: Barbara Kean, the only woman among the escapees, a woman who thus far hadn't made any public appearances since she busted out of Arkham. Dressed in silky black pajamas and with her thick blonde hair tied up, she looked better than she had in her mugshot—and at the same time, somehow worse. There was a manic shine to her eyes, a smile on her face that Isabel didn't quite like. Once again, she was left weighing Jerome versus his colleagues in terms of who she'd rather deal with. She wasn't sure how she felt about this one.

"What's going on in here?" asked Barbara, her voice light and guileless, tilting her head curiously.

Jerome hopped to his feet, taking the sword with him—_damn it,_ Isabel had half hoped he'd forget about it, there wasn't a _lot_ she could do with a sword but it was better than nothing—and resting it on his shoulder. "Making friends," he said, gesturing towards the girls. "How are ya, Babs? Happy?"

"_Hmm_," Barbara said, the sound almost a coo, and Isabel heard a warning in it as she treated Jerome to a long, borderline-disdainful blink.

Jerome didn't seem to recognize it as such—or if he did, he wasn't intimidated. He looked around, brow furrowing in confusion. "Where's your better half?"

Barbara didn't answer that, either. Instead, she said, "You're being summoned. Time for another _excursion,_ I think."

"Oh! Are you coming along this time?" he replied.

Something about Barbara's smile grew brittle, dangerous. She said, "Oh, I think I'll just babysit your little friends for now." She lifted her hand, waggled her fingers, and added, "Run along."

Jerome seemed unbothered by her dismissiveness. He turned to Isabel and Jane, warned them, "Don't have _too_ much fun," and then skirted past Barbara on his way out of the room. He closed the door softly behind him.

Barbara tilted her head to the other side now, and her expression started to look kinder, though it didn't show in her eyes as she observed the girls. As Jane put her arms around Isabel's shoulders, Isabel leaned reflexively back against her, reaching up to clasp her wrists, both girls reassuring one another, and Barbara must have noticed, because her smile grew a little sharper.

"Well," she said, "aren't you two _sweet_."

Isabel chanced a glance out of the corner of her eye, looking at Jane to see that her eyes were wide and curious. She wasn't surprised—Barbara was exactly Jane's type, beautiful and sharp and clearly a little bit crazy, and if Jane knew as much (or as little) about Barbara as she did about the rest of the Maniax, then she wouldn't know that she was a convicted murderer.

Isabel elbowed her. Jane stopped staring at Barbara in order to glare at her. _What?_ she mouthed.

Barbara walked towards them, and, as Isabel braced herself, getting ready for a fight (it couldn't be _that_ hard, Barbara wasn't much bigger than Jane, which was to say _small_), moved right past them to pick up the remote control where Jerome had left it. She retreated them to a leather armchair across the room, changed the channel, and said, "So here's the deal: I've got a few soaps to catch up on and a little bit of free time to do it in, so just keep your mouths shut and we won't have any problems, mmkay?"

Isabel and Jane exchanged glances. Jane shrugged; Isabel shrugged back. If Barbara wasn't toying with them or threatening violence (yet), that made her preferable to any of the others, so they settled back on the couch and kept their silence, Isabel thinking hard about the potential of a deal with Jerome and how she might arrange things so that she could come out on top.

* * *

Jerome followed the _noise_ to the rest of the Maniax, congregated in one of the many dens in the penthouse. He entered the room, put his hands in the pockets of his robe, and raised his eyebrows. "What's going on?"

Before anyone bothered to answer, Theo entered the room behind him. "Oh, Jerome, good, you're here," he said in passing, as if he _hadn't_ timed his entrance to coordinate with Jerome's. He went to the coffee table, picking up the remote there, and turned, squinting at the TV screen as he turned it on and flipped through channels. "We… have a _little_ bit of a problem," he said, landing on the Gotham City News channel.

Expectantly, Jerome turned as Theo turned up the volume. There was a man on screen, standing at a podium, obviously running a news conference—middle aged, a little pudgy, dressed nicely.

"—want her to know that we love her," he was saying as Jerome began to pay attention. "If anyone has _any_ information as to her whereabouts, please, call in and report it."

"Mr. Vanderholt," called a female voice off-screen, "is there anything you'd like to say to Jane if she's watching?"

The man, Mr. Vanderholt, paused for a moment, as a little picture of Jane appeared in the blank space next to him, captioned along the top and bottom: _JANE VANDERHOLT DAUGHTER OF COIL CEO MARK VANDERHOLT AGE 18 MISSING_. After a second or two, he found a camera with practiced precision, and, his voice thick with emotion, he said, "Janey, if you can see this, please: come home."

Theo tossed the remote across the room, not seeming to care that it clattered across the floor, breaking into two pieces on the way, and turned to the others. "Does anyone see a problem?" he asked, sounding as pleasant and as patient as ever.

"_I'll_ say," Jerome chimed in immediately. "That guy's _faking_ it, bigtime."

"You might not be wrong, but that's not the problem I'm talking about," said Theo. To his credit, he didn't sound irritated.

Jerome played dumb. Dobkins, it seemed, unfortunately _was_ dumb, or a suck-up, or both. "That girl looks like the one we took last night," he said, pointing at the screen.

Jerome turned and fixed him with a disappointed glare. Theo said, "Is that right?"

"Are we sure about that?" Jerome asked. The situation had changed, he wasn't sure what the consequences of that were, but he _did_ know that if little Janey turned out to be a CEO's daughter then she'd either be dead or free by the end of the day. He found that he was reluctant to give up a hostage, and he didn't want to remove Isabel's incentive to behave herself.

"We're sure," Theo said, leveling a stern look at him. "That room the girls are in? Wired top to bottom with cameras. I checked myself."

_Unless I do,_ Jerome thought, hardly listening, realizing that while Jane was a liability to Isabel, she was also clearly a hand of caution for her, and if that was taken away? Isabel might prove to be even _more_ fun. Mind changed in a split second, he tipped his head and made his eyes large and agreeable and asked, "Well, if _that's_ the case, then what's the plan?"

"Vanderholt is wealthy," Theo said, thoughtful. "Might prove useful to us in the long run—_if_ he doesn't find out, somehow, that _we_ were the ones who kidnapped his daughter."

"She's already seen most of our faces," Greenwood objected.

"Let me rephrase," Theo said apologetically. "If he doesn't find out that _I_ was the one who kidnapped his daughter. You boys need to turn her loose. Take her with you on the way to the job this afternoon and leave her on a corner somewhere. _Alive._ Do we understand one another?"

Jerome, as the leader, took it upon himself to answer. "_Perfectly._ By the end of tonight, she'll think it was all just some… trippy MDM dream she had. Isn't that the drug rich kids are doing these days?" he asked, directing the question towards Aaron, who looked as though he didn't even realize he was being spoken to. (Not much of a surprise; Barbara seemed to be about the only one who could get through to him half the time.)

"Excellent," Theo said, giving them all another one of his sleazy smiles. "Now. You should all go get ready. There's a bus full of high schoolers awaiting your attention."

"Are the cheerleaders what we settled on?" wondered Jerome out loud, and then shrugged, not really requiring an answer. Really, as long as the day ended with a bus full of people burning to ash, it didn't much matter to him.

"There are new uniforms in your rooms," Theo said. "I think you'll like them."

It turned out that Jerome _did_ like the uniform. Alexander McQueen by way of literal murderers, the pseudo straitjacket, the tasteful crotch strap, the white material that would show every last _spatter_ of blood that hit him—it was all very flattering. On top of the folded pile of clothing, too, was a shiny new revolver. "Oh, thank you, Theo," he muttered out loud as he caught it up, and kissed the loaded cylinder with a loud _mwah._

In no time, he was dressed, and went back down to the room where they were keeping the girls. The others were waiting for him there, and he smirked a little as he realized that they hadn't moved without him. Whether they were happy about it or not, it seemed the agreement about Jerome being the boss had stuck.

"Shall we?" he asked, and without waiting for a reply, burst through the door. Barbara turned lazily to look at him as he entered, and as the others flooded through behind him, the hostages stood up, immediately wary.

He folded his arms behind his back and asked courteously, "Babs, would you give us the room?"

She rolled her eyes, but hopped to her bare feet and strutted out, wisely deciding that she didn't want anything to do with whatever was about to happen. Jerome eyed the girls, clicked his tongue, and then approached, grabbing Isabel by the same hand she was clutching Jane with, pulling her off her friend.

Her eyes widened as she realized what must be happening—_smart girl_—and immediately went to shove him away. He set his heels, didn't give her much ground, grabbing her other wrist and barking, "Greenwood!" Jane screamed as Greenwood seized her, and Jerome pushed Isabel back towards Dobkins, who had circled around behind her.

Dobkins grabbed her by the shoulders, but his hold was tentative at best, and Isabel freed herself from his grip in an instant, turning on him and barking, "Dobkins, pee your _fucking_ pants!" (It wasn't a very sensitive thing to say to a man with mental issues, but Jerome could forgive her for being a little harsh, given what she'd been through in the last twenty-four hours or so.)

Dobkins shrank back. Jerome couldn't really blame him. He was ready for Isabel as she whirled around again, catching her in a pseudo-embrace as she made a lunge for Greenwood and Jane. "Now, now," he chided her, wrestling her arms down.

It didn't work very well. She was strong, and mad, and after a second, ripped her right hand free and indulged his former curiosity about what a punch from her might feel like, popping him right in the jaw. He jerked his head back, feeling the hot, pleasant explosion of pain spread down to the bone, but there was no time to relish it—she was trying to struggle out of what was left of his grip, and he grabbed her again, pushing her hard back into the couch as the others fled the room with Jane.

She fell on her ass, tried to get her feet under her to get back up again, but Jerome was on her in a second, practically kneeling on top of her so she couldn't wiggle away.

He grabbed her by the back of the head to keep her from recoiling and tilted his forehead against hers, staring so closely into her dark eyes that she froze up, actually stopped fighting. He said, "There is _nothing_ you can do about this," and the sincerity in his voice surprised even _him_.

_She_ certainly seemed to believe it, at least for a moment. He leaned back a second, drinking in her expression—he thought for a second that she might be about to cry. Of _course_ she didn't, though; he'd _known_ she wasn't the crying type. Instead, her expression changed, she started to look _pissed_, and he pressed his advantage before he lost it, leaning forward and giving her a sound smooch on the forehead, and, if his instincts were good at all, startling the hell out of her. Then he moved his hand down to the back of her neck and hauled her off the couch, pushing her to the floor.

He was passing through the doorway again before she even made it to her feet again, locking the door behind him. He paused, leaned back against the door, and moments later was rewarded by a wordless scream of rage, the hard wood trembling against him as she pounded at it from the other side. He grinned, then moved.

Greenwood had wisely passed Jane off to Aaron—she was whimpering and crying even as the big guy hustled her towards the elevator. _Perfect,_ Jerome thought, and grabbed Greenwood's shoulder as he got close, pushing him hard against the hallway wall.

Greenwood bared his teeth by reflex, a sick grin that was fooling no one. "You _need_ something?" he snarled.

"Yeah," Jerome said flatly, feeling no need to waste a performance on Greenwood without real witnesses. "The girl back there? The hostage we get to _keep_? Don't talk to her. Don't _touch_ her. She's…" He paused, closed his eyes, drew in a deep, hissing inhale through his teeth as he felt a fresh burst of pain from the spot on his face where she'd hit him. Isabel, he'd decided around that time, was more interesting alive and uneaten by the resident cannibal, so he opened his eyes again and finished: "She's _mine_."

Greenwood's eyes narrowed. The smile stayed, though it got more thoughtful. "You think Theo would be happy to hear that you're making a _girlfriend_ out of a _hostage_?"

_Girlfriend._ Greenwood truly lacked imagination. Jerome widened his eyes, going for sincere. "Oh, by all means, tell him if you want. But Theo? He sees… the _big picture._ It's something we have in _common_," he added, rubbing salt in the wound for good measure, and Greenwood started to look a little pissed, a good indicator that he was receiving the message loud and clear. "You know, honestly, _me,_ I think he'd be more annoyed at _you_ for being a rat than at _me_ for developing a, y'know, so-called _conflict of interest_, but what do I know?" He clapped Greenwood on the shoulder, harder than he needed to. "Take your chances."

Greenwood, still looking angry, said, "Are we gonna do this or not?"

Jerome drew back, eyes bright, and gestured with a flat hand, palm up, across his chest. "Oh! After you."

Greenwood, after one more malevolent stare, skulked away. Jerome, rubbing lightly at his bruising jaw and enjoying the way the pressure sparked more pain, followed.

* * *

**A/N** \- sorry this is late! I was planning to update this weekend but got sick and it kind of derailed everything. I plan to be more consistent from here on out.

A quick note about the setting: Gotham's definitely in that nebulous A-Series-of-Unfortunate-Events setting where there's no set time, the architecture and appliances and such are old-fashioned but there's cell phones and people talk in a modern parlance! All that to say that I guess this means real world things like Queens of the Stone Age and the Saw movies exist when I want them to, and real world things like, you know, the O.C. or Shameless don't. (Now that I've said that watch me make a mistake and reference something an actor from Gotham has actually been in and implode the whole tenuous world.)

Thank you all for the lovely feedback. Till next time!


	4. 4

**4.**

_When you try to see, we'll watch you  
__When you try to leave, we'll keep you  
__When you should be dreaming, we'll wake you  
__But don't scream, we'll make you swallow your words_ \- Metric | **Ending Start**

Isabel pounded at the door until the bottoms of her fists were bruised, then pounded some more.

Eventually, though, she had to admit defeat. Her hands hurt, the door was solid, and _no one_ was coming for her. She gave up—more or less—in favor of pacing. "What do I do, what do I do, what do I do," she muttered, over and over again. She cried a little—hated it, the way she always hated crying, but she was so angry and upset and _sad_ that she couldn't quite hold it back.

She ran through her options. There were no windows in the room. The TV only had access to cable, no internet, no way she could get a message out. The door was so solid that even if she came at it with the heavier things in the room, she wouldn't even make a dent. She could still break the bathroom mirror, but at this point, was it even worth it? Without Jane to protect, all she was doing was ensuring that she would get killed immediately after she made a move on one of her captors. With Jane, at least a sacrifice like that would have _meant_ something—now, it would just be _reckless._

_Jane, Jane._ She was torn to pieces, not knowing what her friend faced right now. Were they out to kill her? Torture her? Why would they take _her_ and not Isabel? Had they found out about Jane's father? Isabel didn't think he would have noticed so soon that she had vanished, but then, Mr. Vanderholt was overbearing and possessive—she wouldn't put it past him.

She felt like ripping her hair out. Instead, she kept pacing until she felt nearly exhausted, and then she dragged herself over to the couch, shucking her boots and socks and jacket on the way, thinking it was impossible that she would manage to sleep.

She realized otherwise hours later, when she woke to someone brushing her hair out of her face.

She jerked awake, still on edge despite her state of sleep, and a hand clasped over her mouth. "Shh, shh, shh," she heard even as she recognized Jerome's face, felt him straddle her around the waist.

He was still in that stupid fucking jacket she'd last seen him in and smelled powerfully of gasoline. She fell silent and calm, waiting for an opportunity even as her blood raced, and, hardly one to disappoint, he uncovered her mouth. She narrowed her eyes and said, "What _is_ this?"

Jerome's hand moved to the edge of her face, long fingers stroking her skin lightly. He said, "_Shhhh_. Just go with it, baby."

_Yeah, fuck that._ Since he'd seen fit to leave her hands free, she reached up, grabbed him by the ribs, and then _pushed_, twisted her hips, and made use of gravity in order to effectively flip him off the couch.

He landed on the hard wood floor, and she followed. It was her turn to straddle _him_, and for some reason, he wasn't fighting her, even as she closed her hands around his neck and leaned near to him.

"Try anything like that again," she hissed into his face, still half-asleep and furious, "and I'll _kill_ you."

Jerome moved a little beneath her—not to escape, but to reach up and plant his hands on the bared edges of her thighs, the skin of his palms cool against her legs. He didn't seem too keen to try to throw her off right away, just said, "Would you, now? How would you do it?"

She hadn't been expecting that, but if he was asking… she looked around for a second, then pulled a thoughtful face. "Well. There's lots of heavy furniture in the room. That vase looks pretty durable. I could just… cave your skull in."

Jerome raised his eyebrows, impressed, or pretending to be. She looked back down at him and tightened her grip on his throat, thumbs pressing close against his windpipe, leaning near to him. "Or I could just fucking throttle you here and now for trying to mess with me in my _sleep_."

"Mmmm," Jerome said, more of a growl than a hum, his eyes growing intent and his hands tightening on her legs. He shifted again and pressed against her and, startled, she leaned back, loosing her grip on his throat.

After a second, ignoring the unexpected pull she felt in her belly in response to his obvious arousal, she commented, "You are _so_ goddamned weird."

Jerome just tilted his head, looking perfectly happy with their arrangement. "Mm," he said again, this time in agreement, "but you're not moving, are you?"

She _didn't_ move, more out of stubbornness and unwillingness to show him anything he might read as fear than because she was entirely comfortable with where this was going. Instead, she crossed her arms over her chest, glared at him, and said, "Where is Jane?"

Jerome pouted. He said, "Aw, and we were having _such_ a nice moment."

"This isn't _nice_. Cut the shit," she said. "You took Jane from me; where did you take her?"

He rolled his eyes. His chest rose as he heaved a belabored sigh, and then he said, "I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this."

Isabel clenched her teeth tight, heart hammering, and growled out, "_What?_"

Jerome sighed again, then, calmly, he said, "She's dead."

For a second, she did nothing, thought nothing, hypnotized by the rush of blood in her ears. Then, finally, she thought _ridiculous,_ and said, "No."

Jerome pulled a frown. "Why do people always say that when they hear that someone's died? Like it'll somehow change the truth."

"Because I don't _believe_ you," she said. She reached down, grabbed his hands, pried them off her legs, and stood up abruptly.

He shifted to fold his arms beneath his head, appearing perfectly comfortable where he was, and said, "Well, that's your prerogative."

Her heart was beating so hard she thought it might kill her. She looked around, fast, and her eyes landed on the remote where Barbara had left it on the arm of her chair. She crossed the room, caught it up, and turned on the TV.

Jerome sat up from the waist, long legs still sprawled out on the floor, and said, "What are you doing."

"Turning on the news," she muttered, flipping through channels.

"This is _Gotham_," he pointed out. "You think one dead girl is gonna make the six o'clock news?"

She didn't answer because she'd just landed on GCN. They were reporting on a stock market crash. She kept her eyes on the banner trawling across the bottom of the screen. After a minute or so, she saw it: the headline JANE VANDERHOLT RECOVERED ALIVE, no further details before it was followed by a report about a mumps outbreak in the city. She turned to Jerome, jerking her chin out as if to ask _what? what now?_

"What?" he asked, playing clueless.

As fate would have it, that was when the anchors started talking about Jane. "Less than twenty-four hours after her supposed disappearance, Coil heiress Jane Vanderholt was found safe."

The scene cut to a video of Jane, her father's hand on her shoulder, pushing her through a crowd of reporters. The mess of voices made it hard to figure out what was being asked, but Jane must have heard something, because she stopped abruptly, turned towards a camera.

"The Maniax took me," she said, her thin voice clear and determined. "They took my best friend, Isabel Montalvo, too. She's still out there, they still have her, _please_—"

She jolted forward. Isabel, who was watching for it, saw that it was because Mr. Vanderholt had pushed her by the shoulder, and he spoke up as Jane moved out of the camera's range: "My little girl is traumatized and confused. _Please,_ we ask that you respect our family at this time, now please—no cameras, please," he said, and his hand covered the camera's lens. The report cut off there.

As she watched, Isabel felt the flood of relief—warm, soothing, the best thing she'd felt since this all began. _She's out. She's alive. She's… with her shitty dad, but she's out of immediate danger. Thank God._

Soon enough, though, that relief was usurped by anger, and once the report was over, she turned to glare accusingly at Jerome. He had climbed lazily to his feet by this point, and at her look, he shrugged, casual, _oh, well, I had to try._

She wasn't having it. She approached him, slowly at first, then faster, jabbing a sharp finger into his shoulder as she reached him. "_You_ told me she was dead."

He jumped backwards, putting his hands up defensively, but she saw it for the performance that it was and kept jabbing at him anyway. "_You_ were trying to fuck with me," she said, backing him up further. "_You_ are an _asshole!_"

He stopped all at once, and having built up her momentum, she ran into him. He felt surprisingly solid given how slim he looked, and she lost her balance. Before she could fully steady herself and back away, he grabbed her by the wrists, forcing them down below her waist and holding her nearly chest-to-chest with him.

"Let me _go_," she spat, trying with no luck to pull away as he tilted his head down to look her in the eye.

"Don't be mad," he said, sounding earnest, but there was a gleam in his eyes that made her think he was full of shit. "I was just kickin' your tires, is all."

"Kicking my… what? _Why_?"

"Wanted to see what was up with you and Blondie. If all that _affection_ was just a front."

She stopped fighting him, still angry but too confused to try to escape his grip and maintain this conversation at the same time. "A _front?_ For _what?_"

He shrugged, making a vague _I don't know_ sound, but she wasn't buying it—Jerome, from the beginning, struck her as a person whose words and actions were very carefully chosen, even when they were designed to seem thoughtless and off-the-cuff. He was suggesting something here, and she narrowed her eyes as she began to suspect exactly _what_.

"No, no, say what you wanna say," she pressed. "You're not the type to chicken out, are you?"

He looked like he wanted to laugh at that, the admittedly transparent attempt to goad him, but didn't. He drew a quick breath, then said, "Well, her dad's got _money_, apparently. Rich kids have had hangers-on since money was _invented_. It's as valid a way of living as any other, I guess."

Contrary to what she'd previously thought, hearing it said out loud made her anger about it trickle entirely away. She stared at him for a little while, then tried again to yank her wrists out of his grip, and this time, he let her. She took a step back, putting a slightly more comfortable distance between them, then said, "That's what _he_ said, too, right up until Jane turned eighteen and moved in with me and turned her back on all that money I supposedly want."

"Bad blood, huh?" he said, pulling a sympathetic face. "I can relate. What was it, he didn't like that she was into girls?"

Isabel stared at him, forehead furrowed, unsure of what to say in response to that. Accurately reading her silence, he tilted his head a little closer to hers, like he was telling her a secret, and said, "Even if the rainbow shirt _hadn't_ been a little bit of a giveaway, the way she looked at _Barbara_ sure was. Can't blame her, huh? Babs is beautiful, mean, crazy—a real triple-threat."

"Yeah," Isabel said finally. "He didn't like that too much."

Jerome leaned back, frowning suddenly. "You two aren't a thing, are you? No," he said, answering his own question with a quick little _a-ha_ gesture of his pointer finger, "_you're_ a little too into _me_ to be with _her_, and you two treat each other more like sisters, anyway."

Isabel felt like he'd just hit her in the head. She stepped back and said, "_Excuse_ me?"

"The way you touch each other and talk to each other," he clarified, deliberately misunderstanding her. "Very _sisterly_. Not like gal pals at _all_."

"No, not that," she said, putting a hand up like she could physically hold back the near-constant barrage of his word vomit and shaking her head. "You… think I'm _into_ you?"

"Oh, I _know_ you're into me," he assured her quickly. "It's okay, though. I'm kind of into you, too."

If this interaction had been happening in the wild, she would have turned right then and walked away. Given that she was confined in the room with him and that wasn't an option…

She laughed. She didn't really mean to; it bubbled up from a deep place in her and spilled out, a slow, dirty-sounding chuckle, and the gleam in Jerome's eyes grew brighter—he was starting to look outright delighted.

She said, "You know, this whole time I've been thinking that you're _not_ crazy, just smart, but I've only _just_ realized I got that the wrong way 'round."

He clicked his tongue at her, disapproving. "Come on, Izzy. It doesn't have to be _weird_ or anything—" she snorted—"we're both good-looking youngsters, the hormones are raging, it's perfectly natural."

It took her a second to get past that—_good-looking youngsters_, what an old-mannish turn of phrase—but after shaking it off, she said, "Look, Jerome, I'm sorry if you got the wrong impression, but I'm _really_ not into the homicidal type."

He stared at her for a while, long enough to make her cross her arms defensively, feeling uncomfortably exposed. Eventually, he said, "That's okay. No rush. We can always talk about it later."

Isabel wasn't sure how to react to that, outside of relief that he was offering an out, however lukewarm. She brought her hand up, scratched at the back of her head, then changed the subject. "Um… where are your colleagues?"

Jerome sucked in a breath through his teeth, then hummed it out again. "Dobkins died today, or so I hear," he said flippantly, like it was nothing. "Aaron… he's probably with Barbara, he _likes_ her—" he punctuated this with a vague pelvic thrust—"and Greenwood? I told him to stay away."

Isabel's anger fell by the wayside in favor of her confusion. She said, "…Greenwood? Why would you say that to him?"

His eyes grew wide. He looked behind him at the door, then back, and said, "Uh, should I… not have?" I figured you'd rather not deal with him."

"No, I… I _don't_ want to deal with him, it just—coming from you, it seems—" _What? Unexpectedly protective and therefore extremely suspicious? _"Nice," she decided.

Jerome looked wounded. "I can be nice."

Isabel had no intention of playing along with his bullshit. "Yeah, but _why_?"

He abandoned the hurt look all at once, confirming that it had just been an act, and shrugging instead. "Didn't want him butting in. His approach to everything is so… heavy-handed. You know, he has no concept of nuance, artistry."

"What are you _talking_ about?" she demanded, more confused than she had been to begin with.

Jerome, who had appeared to lose himself a little bit, came back, shaking his head dismissively. "Nothing. Doesn't matter. Do you still want to play that game?"

It took a moment for her to catch up with him. Once she had, she didn't answer right away, watching him thoughtfully. The rude wake-up call made her feel wary of him, more than she already was, but the ease with which she'd been able to throw him off made her think he hadn't been serious about it, that it was some twisted idea of a joke. Similarly, the whole _you're into me_ line of discussion freaked her out a little, but he'd backed off readily enough, which made her feel slightly better about it.

She remembered how intently he'd looked at her while the rest were taking Jane, how what he'd said to her had the ring of comfort, how she found herself _believing_ him for the first time since this all began. He was still a horrible son of a bitch, but she'd also still rather deal with him than anyone else involved here.

Jane was gone. Jane couldn't hold her back anymore; Isabel's top priority was no longer to protect her. Now it was to get _herself_ out alive, no matter the cost.

"Yeah," she said finally. "I do."

Jerome's eyes were bright, expectant. He put his arms behind his back and said, "What are you thinking?"

She'd given it some thought earlier in the day, during the period of time that Barbara had been with them, and was ready for the question. "You think I'm a bad liar? Okay. Prove it. I'm going to tell you five things about me. Only one of them will be true. You have one shot to tell me which one it is."

He squinted at her and after a beat, asked, "You sure you don't just want to play truth or dare?"

She paused at that, but didn't entertain the idea for long. Sure, she could dare him to hand over a knife or a gun, but he probably knew that, would probably pick truth every time—he seemed like the kind of guy who didn't give a shit who knew what about him. With her game, she wouldn't have to offer up more than one piece of information about herself, and she wouldn't have to do any dares. It was the safer option. "I like mine better."

He sighed, grimacing lightly, and said, "Ah, well, suit yourself. One problem, though."

"What's that?"

"How am I gonna keep you _honest_? When I guess right—" she rolled her eyes—"what's to keep you from telling me I _didn't_?"

She held up an index finger, slightly smug over having thought this through. "I thought about that. Find me some paper and something to write with. Before we start, I'll write down the truth. When you guess _wrong_—" now it was _his_ turn to roll his eyes, nodding slightly, impatiently, waving a hand in the air to tell her to _get to the point_—"you can check it for confirmation."

"That's… acceptable," he said slowly.

"Okay, good, then let's—"

"_Just_…" he interrupted, screwing up his face and holding up a finger, "just… _one_ more thing." Isabel's heart started beating a little quicker. She knew what this was about, but waited for him to say it, watching him intently. He waited a little longer than he should have, doubtless drinking in her undivided attention, and finally followed with: "So _you_ want a knife. We still haven't talked about what _I_ get if I win."

As always with him, she felt certain that showing weakness would be a fatal move, so she held his eyes and ignored her nerves and asked for the second time, "What do you want?"

He smiled at her. It wasn't a nice smile. He said, "I want to _take_ something from you."

"What?" she asked immediately, and again: "What do you _want_?"

He shrugged. "Eh, you know, that changes from minute to minute. It'd be impossible to tell you right now. I'll let you know once I win."

She frowned. "You're basically asking me for a blank check?"

He snapped his fingers. "Yeah, blank check, that's it _exactly._ That a dealbreaker for you?"

It was an outright challenge, and she gave herself a moment to think it over. _Take something_. That could mean _anything_. Her shirt, a kiss, her blood, sex—he could be thinking of cutting the heart right out of her chest, and his expression and tone gave her _nothing_ in the way of helping her figure out which of those things he might want to _take_ from her, if anything.

_But_.

She was under no delusions. Despite the way he sometimes let her push him around, he was stronger and more reckless than she was. As her captor, he held all the power in their situation. He could _already_ take anything he wanted from her, if he decided he felt like it. She could put up a fight, she could certainly do some damage, but the odds of her fighting him off if he attacked her in earnest, the odds of her escaping this place with no assistance were… not great.

She was already at considerable risk with every second she spent in captivity. Accepting more risk wouldn't make much of a difference, and she stood to gain a considerable advantage.

"Let's do this, then," she said. Jerome grinned, immediate and broad. "_First,_ though," she said, holding up a hand to stop him before he could get too eager, "I have _got_ to get something to eat, and you need to… I don't know, shower or change or something." He raised his eyebrows, and she elaborated: "You _reek_ of gasoline."

He frowned, then lifted his arm, sniffed at his pit, then made a face, although Isabel was pretty sure _that_ wasn't where the smell was coming from. "Oof, you're right," he said, looking sheepish. "Sorry. Part of the job, you know how it goes." She really didn't, but refrained from saying so, not wanting to give him the opening to fill her in. He said, "Okay. Uh… give me half an hour."

"Can't wait," she said, deadpan.

"…I'll be back in a flash," he said, giving her one last smile, and then slipped out of the room, the lock clicking behind him.

* * *

**a/n** \- uh oh sisters! shit's heating up. Next up: the game.

Let me know what you think!


	5. 5

**5.**

_Don't know you super well but I think that you might be the same as me-  
__behave abnormally  
__Let's let things come out of the woodwork, I'll give you my best side, tell you all my best lies  
__...yeah. awesome, right?_ \- Lorde | **Homemade Dynamite**

Isabel had thought a reprieve from Jerome's presence would be a welcome break, but soon discovered otherwise.

With him around, she was always on high alert, thinking fast, moving fast, _reacting_ fast to the things he did and said, focused single-mindedly on trying to stay at least one step ahead of him. When he was gone before now, she'd had Jane to distract her, and then the _absence_ of Jane, the worry for her.

Now she didn't have anything—anything but nerves about what she was about to do and the seed Jerome had just planted so neatly in her mind.

_You're into me. I'm kind of into you, too._

_That motherfucker._

She sat on the very edge of the couch, knees slightly splayed, elbows resting on them, tense and ill-at-ease as she waited.

She'd always been good at picking up on cues. That sort of thing—chemistry, interest—she had an easy time identifying, never understood why others acted like people they were attracted to were some great mystery. _Does she like me back? Does he just want to be friends?_ To Isabel, the answers to those questions always seemed obvious, and likewise, as someone who liked to think she knew herself well, she typically figured out how _she_ felt about people fairly quickly.

Jerome was right, at least partially, though she had no plans to admit it. There was something weird going on with them, had been since nearly the very beginning of all of this. She'd been intentionally ignoring the strange tension, because it wasn't helpful, because the whole vibe was strange and unfamiliar given the circumstances, because she wasn't really sure if what she was feeling _was_ attraction or if she was unintentionally doing what she told Jane she wouldn't and _getting all Stockholm-y_. Her eyes tracked him around the room, sure; she was keen to engage with him, didn't shy away from getting physical if the occasion called for it, but she still wasn't sure if that was all because she somehow _wanted_ his attention or recognized it as inevitable and was trying to get out in front of it, to steer it somehow.

_Jerome_ thought he knew, and now that he'd called her out on it, she knew she needed to put a little more effort in figuring it out for herself before he decided he wanted to address the topic again (and he would, she knew he would, he'd practically made her a promise).

She didn't _want_ to. This whole thing was stupid; she didn't see why it was on _her_ to figure out what she was feeling and why—she was in peak self-preservation mode; she'd been in that position enough times to know that she'd _do_ and _say_ and _think_ and _feel_ just about anything to get out intact. If Jerome wanted her to walk him through that?

He could go fuck himself.

The door opened and she rose immediately to her feet, ready for a fight—but Dobkins was dead, Jerome had said, Barbara uninterested, Greenwood warned away. Of course, Greenwood struck her as the sort to push his luck, but he wouldn't be doing that tonight, it seemed; the only person to enter was Jerome. He'd shed the faux straitjacket, was back in the pajamas-and-robe getup from earlier. His hair was dark and wet, neatly combed back, and his arms were full. Even as she looked at him, he threw something at her, a neat underhanded flick, barking, "_Catch._"

She caught. It was a sealed bottle of water, chilled, the kind that rich people paid several dollars a bottle for. She pulled a face and looked up to see that he'd drawn closer and was setting what looked like boxes of Chinese takeout on the table. A little annoyed by the course her thoughts had taken and the frustration it had stirred up, she told him, "You look like Hugh Hefner in that getup."

He looked very seriously at her. "Thank you."

"Wasn't a compliment, dude's gonna die any day."

"You sayin' I look old?"

Isabel snorted. "_Endangered,_ maybe."

He released a short bark of laughter at that. "Is that supposed to be some kinda veiled threat? Izzy, you're adorable," he said, not bothering to wait for an answer, taking a seat on the opposite side of the table from her. "Like a kitten hissing. Sit down."

The order rankled, made her want to stay standing out of spite, but she also didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing for sure that he'd gotten under her skin. She sat, and he flicked a pair of paper-wrapped chopsticks in her direction before lifting a little box from the table and digging in himself.

She followed suit, a bit less enthusiastically. She wasn't as worried by now about poison or drugging (they hadn't needed either to get Jane where they wanted her, and besides, the containers didn't look like they'd been opened)—at this point, she was a little more concerned by the fact that the faster they ate, the sooner they'd get to _the game_. She wasn't quite sure which would feel worse at this point: hanging out in limbo and doing _nothing_, or advancing towards the gamble that had the potential to either save her or ruin her.

_A bit __**more**__ potential to ruin me, but that's neither here nor there…_

She was hungry, _very_ hungry, hadn't had anything to eat since they were taken but the pizza so many hours before, but her nerves were killing her appetite. She used a chopstick to poke at the rapidly-cooling sesame chicken in the box in front of her, the sauce turning into gelatinous lumps, and said, "Can I ask you something?"

Jerome—rather sloppily—slurped up his lo mein and pointed out "You just did." She glared at him; he shrugged. "Just saying."

She pushed forward, since he was _intent_ on toying with her. "Why did you kill your mother when you did?"

He paused mid-chew. The red arches of his brows climbed slowly up his forehead, but she thought he seemed more pleased by the question than not. "What do you mean?"

"I mean—why did you wait till _after_ you had turned eighteen?"

He swallowed. "Well, it wasn't like I _planned_ it." She shot him a skeptical look. He said, "_Well,_ you know, in a distant, _probably someday_ kinda way. The act itself? Fairly spontaneous." Isabel had nothing to say to that. Jerome scooped up some more lo mein, ate it, and stared into the middle distance. "Maybe that was why I got caught," he murmured, and she was pretty sure that now he was just talking to himself.

After a second, he snapped back into focus, giving her a wide, mischievous grin, like they were discussing shoplifting or tagging instead of matricide. "I don't think it mattered, in the end. By the time I realized for sure that I was _going_ to kill her, I was old enough that the city would've tried me as an adult no matter _when_ it shook out. The judges here are bastards that way," he added confidentially.

"That's why they sent you to the asylum instead of Blackgate, I'm sure," Isabel said dryly.

Jerome's smile faded, a fact which sent a faint spike of alarm through her. He set down his takeout box and clasped his hands together between his knees, then looked at her and asked, quietly, "Have you ever _been_ to Arkham?"

_Well, shit, I guess that was just a bridge too far._ Keeping her voice soft, trying to avoid causing any further offense—aside from getting a little handsy, Jerome hadn't hurt her thus far, and she didn't want to try to escape while nursing a head injury—she said, "No. I haven't."

He nodded. His eyes were large and green and sad, and without his typical grin or that malevolent light to his gaze, he suddenly looked very young, the confidence and command she'd come to expect from him completely gone. "It's… quite a place," he said. "Every day they throw everyone in what they call 'The Pen,' basically a cafeteria without the food—old 'n young, violent and… _less_ violent, strong and weak. Someone decides to shred you to pieces in there and they're stronger than you…" He shrugged, pulling a face. "Good luck. The guards just think it's funny. That is, if the _guards_ aren't the ones coming to lay a beating on you in the _first_ place. Then _night_—it's always cold, and _something's_ always dripping, and the _screams_… they never stop." He'd looked away, lost in the memory, but met her eye again briefly before faltering and ducking his head, shoulders slumping slightly. "It was…"

_Shit_, she thought again as he trailed off. She looked at him, frowning, wondering if maybe she should try to comfort him, say something nice, maybe put a hand on his shoulder—she didn't _feel_ truly sympathetic, of course, not quite generous enough to feel empathy for the guy who'd _abducted_ her, but she thought maybe it would earn her some brownie points, when…

She heard a low rumble of a chuckle, and finally twigged to the fact that he was just messing with her. _Again._

The laugh crescendoed fast into a loud, energized cackle, and he threw his head up, eyes wide and bright with it. "It was _great!_ Oh, Izzy—you know how _easy_ it is to _run_ that place with a little bit of elbow grease and a _smidge_ of optimism?"

"Really easy, I'm guessing," she said flatly, snatching up her water bottle and leaning back, angry at herself for being taken in, even if she hadn't been exactly _moved_ by the would-be sob story.

Jerome didn't seem to notice her sulk, or if he did, he didn't care. "Sometimes I can't sleep at night without the screams," he confided in her, and sighed, the giggle fit evaporating into thin air. "If this wasn't such a good gig, I'd think about going _back_. Didn't expect to be _homesick_, but hey, here we are."

Staring at him as she took a sip of water, Isabel realized something, and her eyes widened slightly. "Wow," she said after swallowing. Jerome glanced at her, his gaze almost alien, like a curious bird of prey, and she read the question in his eyes and clarified for him. "This isn't some edgelord _act_, like the melodramatic shit Greenwood likes to put on. I mean—not that you aren't melodramatic, you _majorly_ are, but this… you really _mean_ it."

"Of course I do," he said, looking a little surprised that the issue was even in question.

"That's so… sad."

She'd spoken thoughtlessly, honestly, a little too lost in the troubling thought that he was really, genuinely comfortable in a place like Arkham Asylum—and the implications of what had passed for _home_ before then for him to have adapted so quickly to such an ugly environment—and it was the wrong thing to say. In a flash, he'd pulled his grin back on (and she was beginning to recognize it for what it was: a mask or as good as, something to draw the eye and stop anyone from seeing what thoughts might be boiling beneath the surface until he was _ready_ for them to) and he rose to his feet.

Her instinct was to flinch back, especially as he stepped up on the low coffee table, sending takeout cartons flying, but nearly as quickly, she rejected the impulse, re-capping her bottle and flinging it to the side and rising to her feet to meet him as he stepped down again on her side of the table. Not for the first time this all started, she wished she was just two or three inches taller—the fact that he could tilt his head and look down on her, even if it was just by a short distance, irked her. He was doing it now, beaming at her, and she didn't trust what she saw in his eyes, though she made herself meet them all the same.

She kept her fists clenched at her sides so she wouldn't haul off and hit him and make this worse than it needed to be. Jerome's bare hands fluttered, for a second, at the edges of her jaw, then he appeared to think better of it. He'd showered, but even so, she caught a whiff of gasoline off him.

"_Sad_," he said, very clearly, "is potential, _wasting away,_ surrounded by idiots and _elephant shit_. I've _seen_ sad. This? _This_ isn't sad."

It was weird—despite the initial vibes she'd gotten from the sudden shift in atmosphere, he wasn't angry. Jerome, from what she'd been able to gather, was a phenomenal actor, _loved_ to act, did it constantly, but occasionally she saw _something_: not quite a slip-up, nothing she'd describe as _a crack in the armor_, but certainly a break in the relentless teasing and mockery and _performing_. She was seeing it now, and while she was reluctant to let her guard down (he'd displayed a talent for trickery, and she wasn't keen to get sucked into any of his bullshit again), she couldn't help but think, for the second time in rapid succession: _he really means this_.

She dropped her eyes and muttered, faintly, "Yeah, I guess I get that," and certainly she was trying to de-escalate the situation, but _she_ also meant it, too—or at least, _mostly_ meant it. She understood feeling trapped and helpless under a parent, broke and too young to have any real power, feeling like there was no way out, and yes, she understood the rage that came when faced with a world that didn't care and _wouldn't_ _listen_. She wasn't going to _admit_ it to him, and she still thought it was mega-fucked, one way or another, that he genuinely believed murder and mayhem and long stints locked away was _superior_ to whatever life he'd had before, but she was starting to understand a little bit.

When she glanced up at Jerome again, he appeared to be faintly disappointed. Knowing him, he'd been hoping she'd put up more of a fight. Before she could say anything else, though, he rallied. He rolled up onto the balls of his feet, looking suddenly impatient, and he said, "Don't we have a game to play?"

_Right_. She felt her stomach twist at the thought. She'd been putting it off, consciously or unconsciously, but it was time to be brave and take her shot. She nodded, and she must have looked pretty unenthusiastic, because Jerome stooped slightly to catch her eye, frowning cartoonishly in what she assumed was meant to be an exaggerated reflection of her own expression. "_Heyyy,_" he said, "c'mon, what is it? You finally faced the fact that you're gonna _lose_?"

If she'd been inclined in any way whatsoever to give him the benefit of the doubt, she'd think he was doing her a favor, stoking her contrariness so that she'd be too stubborn to feel scared, but given that he was the _reason_ she had to feel scared to begin with, she was hardly feeling generous. More likely he didn't want to lose out on his fun and was making sure she was too proud to back out.

_Fat chance of that._ This was the only opportunity she'd been able to find since she'd been brought here. She narrowed her eyes, and in response to the decidedly unfriendly glare, he beamed at her.

"_Good_ girl," he said, and caught her hand. Before she could yank it back, he was lifting it high over her head, and rather than letting him wrench her arm out of its socket, she spun obediently beneath it.

"Jerome—" she started in protest, only to be twirled again, and to her mortification, she _laughed_. Only a little bit, and definitely just because she'd just been struck with the absolute _absurdity_ of all this, making nice with her _kidnapper_, trying to make him just _give_ her leverage against him—it was little kid stuff, the hope of a fool.

At the sound, Jerome quit abruptly, stopping her with a hand on her hip, and he brought her arm down again, though he didn't let go of it. "Oh, see, now, that's more _like_ it," he said enthusiastically. "I mean, come on, Izzy. I was starting to think you _couldn't_ laugh."

"_Sure_ I can," she said, a sharp, distinctly unkind edge to her smile that only seemed to encourage Jerome—he crowded a little nearer, his hipbones against hers, his fingers pressing a little harder into the flesh at her side, and she thought about pushing his hands away, _but_ _fuck it anyway, what power do I really have here?_ Instead, she lifted both hands (he let the one he held slide from his grip, looking intrigued) and wound them around his slim neck.

His grin grew. He bent a little closer to her, close enough that she thought he might try to kiss her soon. She figured she should ward that sort of advance off, so, very softly, she said, "I'll laugh my _ass_ off when I beat you at this game. We should get started." She tilted her head, making her eyes as wide and innocent as she knew how. "Don't you think?"

Jerome chuckled, and pointedly lifted his hands away from her. Following his cue, she unwrapped her hands from his neck, and he stepped back and made a droll gesture further into the room. "After _you_."

He'd brought her some rich person's journal, blank, but identifiable based on the leather cover and thick, creamy paper, and a fountain pen. She ripped a page out, and since Jerome had basically trashed the table with stray takeout, she sat cross-legged on the floor with her ill-gotten gains and then looked up at him expectantly.

Jerome stood in front of her with his hands in his robe pockets. "Uhh. What."

"Turn around," she prompted.

His eyebrows shot up. "Seriously?"

"You could totally see what I'm writing from there. _Turn around_."

He rolled his eyes, lifted his hands up in a half-assed pose of surrender, and then turned around. She shook her head, then leaned down and wrote something on the paper.

She blew on it to dry it, fanned it in the air just to be sure, then folded it in half. "'Kay," she said, and he slowly, one step at a time, turned back around again, his expression making it clear that he thought the whole thing was unwarranted pageantry. She showed him the folded paper, eyebrows raised, _got it?_

He looked impatient, waved a hand, _yeah, I got it._

She tucked the paper into her back pocket. "Okay. Ready for the lies?"

He stooped down in front of her, hands clasped between his pajama'd knees. "I'm ready for the _truth._"

"Sure," she said, making a heroic effort not to roll her eyes in turn. "Okay. Here goes."

He licked his lips, eyebrows darting up for a second, _daring_ her. As if she needed the extra incentive.

"First. I hate this fucking city. Second. I hate my fucking stepfather. Third. I hate fucking _cats_. Fourth. Jane's dad came onto me once. Fifth. I don't speak any Spanish."

Jerome took all these factoids in with appropriate gravity, nodding along as she fed them to him. Once she'd finished, she extended her hand, raised her eyebrows, _well?_

"Well," he said, taking his cue like a professional, "let's start with the _definitively_ untrue. Jane's dad never came onto you, because he fully believes you're a lesbian who's corrupting his _actually-straight_ daughter, am I right?"

"That one was a gimme," she acknowledged with a lift of her chin.

"_Right_," he drawled. "You don't hate cats, because you're _basically_ a cat—"

"Oh, what the _fuck_—"

"Easily offended, touch-averse unless _you_ initiate it, kinda needy despite all that; look, we can get into _that_ later, I'm just eliminating the lies."

She glared at him. He took this as permission to continue.

"But the rest is a mixed bag, isn't it? Can't argue that you love the city because you live here, because you're _obviously_ poor, despite your—ahem—_wealthy_ connections, and probably don't have the means to _leave_. Maybe you _do_ hate your stepfather, how would I know? And there are plenty of second, third and so-on generation Latinas in this city who don't speak Spanish—I've been meaning to ask you, actually; what kind of name is Montalvo?"

"The Puerto Rican kind."

He gave her a little salute. "Anyway. The truth is _obviously_ that you hate your stepfather."

She raised her eyebrows. "Why is _that_ obvious?"

"Well—leaving _aside_ the fact that you're a bad liar, just like I said—" she pulled a face at him, a half-sneer—"it just makes sense. You said Jane is eighteen; is that your age, too?"

"Yes," she said, eyeing him warily.

"That's a little young to be living on your own, unless things are bad with parents. Hell, even _if_ things are bad with parents. A lot of kids can't swing it; _I_ couldn't—or at least," he paused, rolling his eyes up thoughtfully, "I didn't _think_ I could. But this isn't about me. Jane's got daddy issues; you do, too, right? I imagine it had _quite_ the bonding effect."

"_Daddy issues_ is a term only assholes use," Isabel said reflexively.

Jerome grinned at her. "I'm right, aren't I? The _real_ question is whether or not you thought to write a lie on that paper instead of the truth, but I doubt you did. You probably thought I was just talking out of my ass about knowing when you're lying, right?"

Isabel considered the question, then climbed to her feet with a sigh, batting away Jerome's considerately outstretched hand as he rose along with her. "That," she said slowly, reaching into her back pocket to retrieve the folded paper, "would have been the _smart_ idea."

She handed it to him. He took it between index and middle fingers, not touching her, and unfolded it. He looked at the black ink lines forming a single word, Isabel's messy print of the word _stepfather_.

He folded the paper back up, stuck it in his pocket, and asked, "So did he diddle you?"

Isabel couldn't help but snort. It wasn't funny—of _course_ it wasn't funny—but the crudeness of the question took her off-guard. "No," she said. "He wasn't _that_ kind of asshole."

"What, then?"

"What else?" She shrugged and sniffed, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. "He liked to slap me around. When my mom was alive he didn't mess with me, but she died when I was ten—carjacking gone wrong, Gotham City, what're you gonna do—and it just deteriorated from there. I think he thought of me as a burden he hadn't signed up for."

"They all do," he said encouragingly. "Does the past tense mean he's… no longer with us?"

_Oh, __**now**__ he goes for delicacy._ "The past tense means I got out and don't speak to him anymore."

He nodded, taking this in, then fixed her with a devilish look. "Want to kill him?"

She glared at him. "No."

"Oh." He nodded, accepting this in stride, then after a short pause asked, "Do you want me to kill him _for_ you?"

She frowned. "_What?_"

"It'd be pretty easy, I mean, I kill _lots_ of people these days. What's another name on the list, hmm?"

And Isabel took a second to actually think about it. In principle, of course, she was opposed to murder, but, like many, she believed there were a few people out there who could _use_ a good killing. Her stepdad David was definitely one of those, although admittedly she was a little bit biased. And Jerome, he was practiced in the art of parent-killing, much more so than she was, anyway—she had little doubt that he could manage admirably.

Still: she'd gotten away from him. As far as she knew, he had no other victims, was no longer hurting anyone. At a certain point, she thought it was best to leave well enough alone.

"Thanks for the offer, but I wouldn't want to put you through the trouble."

"Oh, it's no trouble," he said, eyes wide and soulful.

She suddenly felt very tired. She closed her eyes and shook her head and said, "Can we just cut to the end of all this, please?"

"I'm sorry, the end of…?"

Isabel wanted to tell him to cut the shit, but held back—antagonizing him would only make things worse. "You get to take something from me. Blank check, remember? So let's get it over with."

His eyes grew large. "I—I had completely forgotten," he claimed, raising one hand, _I swear._

She was over it, didn't bother to even acknowledge this latest line of bullshit. "Go ahead," she told him wearily. "Unless your plan is just to hold it over my head forever, make me crazy with the not-knowing?"

Seeing that the teasing approach wasn't doing him any favors, Jerome switched gears. "Nah. I'll go ahead and do it now."

She folded her arms behind her back and just waited, hoping that she at least appeared calm, though her mind was racing. She wasn't sure she had any intention of humoring the agreement—it depended on what he had in mind, but instinct told her to clock him, to _run_, even though she was fully aware there was nowhere to go and it would be worse for her in the end.

He stepped close, and she dropped her eyes, ignoring the nearness the best she could, _out of sight out of mind_. Her heart jumped as his fingertips grazed over her bare thigh, skimming up to the ragged edge of her shorts, further up still, sliding beneath the hem of her shirt and then… stopping there, palm flat and cool against her belly.

_And here comes the blade_, she thought, swallowing hard. She wanted to tell him to hurry up, nearly did, but her nerves flared up and she couldn't find the voice, because in truth, she didn't want him to.

She felt the touch of his other hand at her face, fingers curling at the line of her jaw, her chin. She allowed him to guide her face up, her tension and curiosity compelling her to meet his eyes.

He looked… thoughtful, which was a bit of a surprise. Eyes slightly narrowed, mouth pulled down in a vague frown—she got the impression he was trying to decide what, exactly, he should do with her.

His fingers twitched against her stomach. She flinched, and he saw it, his frown morphing into a little smirk and his eyes lighting up with a little self-satisfied gleam that practically screamed danger and chilled Isabel to the bone, forcing her to _fight_ to stay still.

Then Jerome released her face, reached forward, and deftly pulled the long silver earring out of her ear, so quickly that she didn't even realize what he'd done until he was pulling back, drawing both hands away from her and curling the light chain around his index finger.

She blinked, reached up to her ear to feel the little dip in her now-empty lobe, and then, as if maybe he'd pulled some horrible trick she wasn't yet conscious of, she ran her fingers up the edge of the rest of her ear—but no, she counted off the other studs and rings lining the shell, nothing burning, bleeding, oozing.

"That's it?" she asked before she could think better of it.

Jerome widened his eyes at her even as he slipped the earring into his pocket. "Why, is there something you think I might want more?"

"No," she said hastily, suddenly aware that her heart was hammering away in her chest and her mouth was dry—from relief, from residual fear, she wasn't entirely sure.

Jerome nodded, looked appraisingly at her, and then reached out and caught her hand. "C'mon," he said. "Let's watch TV."

* * *

**A/N** \- fun fact, Homemade Dynamite was the working title for this story and will likely be what I call the inevitable series this turns out to be.

ah shit I just realized I missed my chance to update on Friday the 13th under a full moon. I'm a fool! ah, well, no use now. I'll have another chapter out in a week, in the meantime let me know what you thought!


	6. 6

**6.**

_You gotta see the artistry  
__in tearing the place apart with me, baby!_ \- Mother Mother | **Wrecking Ball**

It was about one o'clock in the morning, and Jerome was supremely comfortable.

Isabel, perhaps less so, though he was fairly sure she'd loosened up some over the past hour or so they'd spent on the couch. She'd gone stiff like he'd stabbed her when he first laid his head in her lap, which he thought was overkill—he had never _stabbed_ her—but he'd chosen not to let it hurt his feelings, even though he thought he'd been _more_ than a gentleman in his dealings with her. He'd had opportunity after opportunity to hurt her and had taken none of them, even after _she'd_ lashed out at _him_; you'd think that would earn a guy some brownie points, but she'd stayed wound tight and on her guard. Maybe it was the whole _being kidnapped_ thing. Jerome wouldn't know.

In truth, he was only pretending to watch the screen, which was playing some old black and white English detective show that he never would have stood for if he was actually paying attention. He was thinking about what he'd learned about Izzy, the future of the Maniax, the future of _Gotham_… for all that he was prone and motionless (rare enough for him, but the appeal of a pretty girl who hated his guts had proved irresistible), the events of the day had gotten him _all_ revved up and sleep seemed entirely out of reach, which was exactly the way he liked it best.

So Dobkins was dead. That wasn't such a surprise: maybe the little guy really did have hidden depths of violence like Isabel seemed to think, but Jerome had never seen evidence that Dobkins was capable of committing _any_ of the crimes he'd been locked up for, not even when they were imprisoned together in Arkham, which was certainly a place that brought the crazy out. Still, useless or not, they were down a pair of hands.

Jerome wondered if Theo planned to replace him. If he did, he hadn't said as much, hadn't even seemed all that fazed by their failure to torch the bus-full of teenyboppers alive, which had frankly surprised the hell out of Jerome. He'd spent the whole trip back to the penthouse coming up with different ways to shift the blame onto Greenwood without making it obvious that that was what he was doing, but it turned out to be unnecessary. Theo had already heard about the interference by the cops (specifically by Jerome's old pal _Jim Gordon,_ busybody, do-gooder, apparently Barbara's former squeeze—it really was a small world) and, more than anything, appeared sympathetic.

"Better luck next time, boys," he'd said upon their return. "Go clean up and get some rest. We'll try again tomorrow."

It certainly wasn't the ranting and raving Jerome had been expecting. He didn't necessarily trust Theo's equanimity, but then, he didn't really trust anything or any_one_. All told, though, Theo had been easy to work with: generous, laid-back, cunning, and _much_ more likely to encourage them to lay on the gas than the brakes, which was unprecedented for an authority figure in Jerome's young life. It was a great arrangement, really, which was why it sparked the contrary side of Jerome to wonder what he'd have to do to _really_ piss Theo off.

He was pretty much planning to kill Greenwood already (no concrete ideas, just a persistent inclination, and as he'd told Isabel, those had a history of paying off), but he somehow doubted that would do it, especially _now_, with as unaffected Theo had been by Dobkins's death. What else?

What about stepping over the line with a hostage?

His gaze crawled up to Isabel's face. She was staring at the TV screen, but going by the blankness in her eyes, she was a million miles away. _Probably plotting her next sucker punch_, Jerome thought, and the idea gave him chills, the good kind. Absently, he pressed at the spot on his jaw where she'd hit him earlier in the afternoon (he wasn't the type to bruise visibly, despite his fair complexion—a brief consultation with the mirror when he'd showered a little while back showed a faint bluish mark and not much else, which he thought was a shame; he kind of liked the idea of getting all marked up by Isabel), applying pressure till he felt bone and the bruised flesh was aching beneath his relentless fingertips.

She wasn't as bad a liar as he'd claimed, actually, but elimination and intuition had helped him win their little game with ease. She'd been vehement about Jane's shitty dad in a way that people with good home lives rarely were about other people's shitty parents; her _protectiveness_ of Jane smacked of projection, like she was doing what no one had been around to do for _her_. (Personally Jerome thought that kind of projection was a waste of energy better saved for looking after _oneself_, but at the same time, he figured it was _something_ to do with the anger that came with having been a child expected to fend for themselves among the wolves.)

It was the same old song and dance, yet another kid chewed up and spat out mangled by a parent that had no right to the title. It _was_ interesting that she didn't seem to want him dead, though—he would have thought that someone with Isabel's _eye-for-an-eye_ temperament would jump at the offer, especially if she wouldn't be the one getting her hands dirty. He _knew_ she still hated the guy, he could hear the bitterness in her voice.

It had to be some misguided belief that somehow _letting it go_ was more healing than actual _closure_ (God knew he'd heard enough of _that_ during half-assed _therapy sessions_ at Arkham, which he always figured was a moot point, given that he already _had_ his closure). He wondered if he could convince her otherwise. Probably. Probably wouldn't even take much effort: people, he'd seen, wore their ugliness and violence—their _fun_ side—under just a thin veneer of civility. A bit of pushing, a little encouragement that that violence not only felt good but was _natural_, and most people ditched the pretense.

Speaking of violence—the look on her face was starting to get a little tense. Since all she'd have to do to break his nose would be to lift her fists and just bring them down hard, and since Jerome, who was vain, hoped to avoid that outcome, he spoke up to offer her a distraction. "Why the long face?"

His voice pulled her back from wherever she'd gone, and she looked down at him—scowling still, and he thought _oops, maybe not the best approach to have taken_—but after a second, she relaxed (or _pretended_ to relax, anyway; he could still feel the tension in her legs underneath him).

"Nothing. Just—lost in a spiral of defeatist thoughts, you get it."

He frowned. "Defeatist… how?"

She sighed, tilting her head back and looking at the ceiling. "Just… thinking about the _increasing_ likelihood that I won't actually make it out of this alive. Thinking about the things I wish I could do instead of… like, die." Her voice, fairly brash and confident as a rule, went soft on the last word.

_Okay, this isn't working_. From his position, he couldn't see her face anymore, so he hauled himself upright into a sitting position and then turned himself around, back to the TV, cross-legged on the cushion beside her. She shifted reflexively at the movement, turning to face him as well, pulling her legs up to loosely cross them in a mirror of his position, a fact that didn't go unnoticed by him.

"Things like _what?_" he prompted.

At the question, the corner of her mouth hooked up in a wry little smirk. She looked at him like she was aware that he was _trying something_, like she wasn't sure _what_ but had no intention of letting him get one over on her. "What if I said I wanted to rob banks?" she said, the usual challenge back in her tone. "I don't know. Maybe give killing people a try."

His brows shot up. "I'd say I could maybe get you an internship, though I gotta warn you—the mortality rate is turning out to be…" He winced slightly. "…higher than expected."

She chuckled, just a small little disbelieving huff of a sound, but it was _something_. He thought she should laugh more, really. She didn't seem to get enough fun out of life.

"But… that's _not_ what you mean, is it?"

She stared at him with her dark, dark eyes, all traces of amusement dropping from her face, and shook her head. "I've been thinking more and more in the past few years about doing something, I don't know, _helpful_. Work at a nonprofit, community outreach, something like that."

Jerome was already making a pretty horrible face. "A _nonprofit_?"

"Yeah," she said, lifting her chin, almost defiant in the face of his clear distaste. "I mean, just vague ideas, I haven't really thought in-depth about, like, a _career_, but that's kind of the direction I was thinking."

Jerome started groaning softly before she was even halfway through, reaching up to rub his temples with his fingertips and screwing his eyes shut like the very idea was giving him a headache—it wasn't, of course, but he'd grown up in a circus and he had a penchant for drama. He barely let her finish before saying, "Nooooo, Izzy, _no!_ Ugh. What a _waste_. Why would you _do_ something like that?"

The amusement from just before had completely vanished. She stared at him and flatly told him, "I _haven't_ done anything like that. I was just saying I would _like_ to."

Jerome dropped his hands and the pretense, and _tried_ to give it some consideration, as foolish as he found the thought. He'd seen plenty of on-guard, defensive Isabel, and as funny as _that_ side of her was, he was starting to wonder if perhaps courting her more trusting side would prove more productive in the end. It didn't go too well—he was pretty sure his face just looked _sarcastic_, which he couldn't exactly help.

"Yeah—nope. No," he said after giving it what he was pretty sure was a fair shake. "The city's a cesspool, Isabel. Why would you want to _change_ that? I mean, not that you _could_, Gotham knows what it is, but why waste the time trying?"

"What, you think this place is beyond redemption?"

"Uh, _yeah_." She snorted, but he just lifted an index finger, _listen_. "Really, if Gotham doesn't have its badness, what _does_ it have? Did you know that in the twenties this place was completely under the control of bootleggers and booze-runners? In the _fifties_, there was that whole mess with, y'know, the founder of Arkham murdering his patient, totally losing it in the process. Seventies was serial killers, eighties was the drug boom, and the nineties onward? Good ol' financial exploitation, babe. The corruption in this place is practically a tourist attraction in itself, and _I'd_ argue that you're doing the city a disservice by even trying to change that."

"What, then? You think I should just give up and die?" she asked, watching him steadily.

He frowned, disgruntled. "_I _don't think that's what I'm saying. Do you?"

"Well, I tell you the reason I'd regret dying is because I'd like to _help_, you tell me that's all but useless, I assumed—"

"I think you should revisit the thought you had earlier." She looked like him like he was crazy, but he let it slide for now. "About killing," he clarified, since she seemed to need it.

She snorted and looked away. "No, no, no," he said encouragingly, shifting a little closer and reaching out to touch her chin, to turn her back to him—she jerked away, but looked at him again, so he counted it as a win. "Just think about it," he said, returning his hands to his lap in a way he hoped she would see as an olive branch of sorts. "Our _parents_, Isabel, they knew what they were doing. They hurt us when we were too little or too helpless or too broke to do anything about it, and they _enjoyed_ doing it. Me, you? We were brought up on violence, and nobody _did_ anything about it. Don't you think a society that allowed that to happen deserves to reap what it sowed? Don't you think we should do what we _know_?"

She was staring at him, but now at least the contempt and derision were gone—they'd given way to confusion, her brow furrowed deeply. When he paused for a moment, she responded to his point. "You think… because people hurt us, we should… what, aim for _karmic payback_? Put back into the world what _we_ got from it?"

He snapped his fingers, loud enough to make her flinch, and pointed triumphantly at her. "_Now_ you're getting it."

Her expression didn't change. If anything, she frowned more deeply, as if the thought _upset_ her. "I don't… Jerome, that's not how I think about things _at all_." Now it was his turn to look at her like _she_ was crazy. She added, "Our parents were shitty, yeah, but that just means they struck a negative balance. I'd like to _reverse_ that. As much as possible."

He became aware, suddenly, that he was glaring at her. His voice got involuntarily rougher, deeper, when he said, "Oh, you think I should try to pay that _bitch's_ debt for her?"

Isabel didn't answer. Instead, she scooted back a little, away from him, until she'd backed herself right into the arm of the couch.

It took some effort to cool the sudden rush of anger and realize that he'd spooked her. He took a moment of silence, swallowing back the vitriol that rose up whenever he thought about his mother, and then he forced a quick smile. Judging by Izzy's face, it wasn't much of a comfort, but hell, he was doing what he could. He changed the subject, trying a different tack, and asked, "Does it bother you that he's still alive?"

Isabel's expression shifted into guardedness, which wasn't as helpful for her as she might think, because all it really did was tell him she had something to hide. Given the direction the conversation had taken, there was really only one thing that could be. "I try to avoid thinking about him as much as possible," she said, a non-answer that he saw right through.

He nodded sagely. "That's because he's not dead yet. Alive? He's still scary."

"Were you scared of your mother?"

He could tell by her tone, sullen and insolent, that she was trying to turn the conversation around on him so she didn't have to face the point. It made him a little inclined towards patience, the knowledge that she was lashing out because he was getting to her, so he rolled with the question, pulling a thoughtful face. "It's been years," he answered, honestly enough. "Maybe when I was small. I haven't been small for a _long_ time."

"So what makes you think I'm scared of _him_?"

"Well, why would you try not to think about him otherwise?"

"Maybe because he's a waste of energy and I've got better things to do?"

"Or maybe because it _scares_ you, the idea that he's _out there_, the idea that he could crash back into your life at any time." It wasn't a question, and Isabel seemed to realize this, because she stared at him, brow furrowed (more like she was worried than like she was afraid, which was interesting) and half of her bottom lip caught thoughtfully between her teeth. The motion drew his eye, and he stared for a moment.

He was a little surprised at how serious he sounded when he spoke next. "You've got violence all over you, Izzy."

Her lips parted—she was surprised, too—but she didn't say anything. Jerome fought the considerable urge to walk it back, make a joke (he was at his most comfortable being glib, of course, but in this case he'd make an exception, just to make _sure_ to get his point across). He met her eye, his expression unnaturally somber, and added, "I don't think I've ever met another person so ready to fight, and to fight _killers_. It's like you _need_ to do it."

"I _do_ need to do it," she said, clearly annoyed. "I'm in _kind_ of a shitty situation here, Jerome."

"What, and lashing out _improves_ it?" He shot her a skeptical look. "You'd be better off playing nice, and I think you know it."

"I _am_ playing nice," she said petulantly.

Jerome cleared his throat and pointed at his jaw. Isabel scowled.

"So because I don't just let you guys do whatever you want without a fight, that means I've got some kind of inherent bloodthirst?"

He considered the question, then said, "Yeah, that's about the size of it." She snorted; he showed her his palms. "_Just_… think about it, will ya? _I_ think you could do some… very interesting things if you just _leaned into_ it. I'd even be willing to _help_ you."

"By, say, giving me a weapon?"

He narrowed his eyes, concealing his private delight. "You lost that game fair and square," he announced, and turned back to the television, changing the channel to something with more blood and explosions. He heard her huff quietly behind him, but he didn't acknowledge it. He'd planted the seed; he had no doubt it would grow.

They had all the time in the world.

* * *

When Tabitha cracked the door open, it was a few hours later—some time early in the morning, Jerome thought, though it was hard to tell with no windows. He and Isabel had been asleep on the couch (she'd fallen asleep first, probably reluctantly, but Jerome didn't sleep much and she didn't have a chance at outlasting him), wrapped comfortably around each other, and Tabitha was quiet, but he was a light sleeper and woke at the sound of the key in the lock.

He opened his eyes and watched as Tabitha stuck her head into the room, spotted him, and then crooked her finger at him. _Come here_.

As with her brother, Jerome found he didn't much mind taking Tabitha's orders—for now, anyway. She was beautiful and lethal and knew how to have a good time; he could respect that. So, even as she ducked out of the room, he sat up, hands in fists as he stretched out his arms with a groan.

Isabel _growled_. Jerome snickered to himself, looking down at her—her forehead furrowed in displeasure, and she didn't bother to open her eyes, but she reached out beside her, feeling the warm empty space on the cushion where he'd just been, like she was searching for him. _Aww_.

"Back in a jiff," he said, voice a little rough. Isabel opened one eye and glared at him. _Not a morning person, then._

He got up and went in search of Tabitha. He found her with Theo in the dining room. None of the others were present.

"Jerome!" Theo greeted him warmly when Jerome entered the room. "Have some breakfast."

Jerome was wary by habit, but he wouldn't be working with the Galavans if he thought they would or _could_ willingly screw him over. He prowled around the table, snatched up a few pieces of bacon, and munched on them while watching Theo questioningly.

"Big day," Theo said.

"Should be fun," Jerome agreed with a noncommittal shrug.

"Think it'll go okay without Dobkins?"

Jerome treated his patron to a skeptical squint. _Come on, now._ "You don't really believe he was much of a _loss_, do you?" he drawled.

Tabitha, sitting opposite her brother, laughed quietly to herself. Theo gave her a look that was some weird blend of affection and reproof, and Jerome looked from one to the other, feeling abruptly uncomfortable. It was unnatural to him, witnessing family members—_siblings_—act like they actually _liked_ each other, and he couldn't even tell himself it was because there was something creepy going on: their bond scanned as entirely above-board. It would have been weird enough to encounter in normal circumstances; the fact that they were both manipulative killers made him wonder how they'd gotten to that place without killing _each other_ to begin with. It baffled him.

(On a more entertaining note, Tabitha's amusement gave him a little more insight into Dobkins's fate. He'd spotted a dark form he'd _thought_ was her a few higher rooftops away during the excursion at the newspaper offices, wondered if she was there to watch over them, to curb anyone who might jeopardize the mission or think twice about working with the group now that they were out in the open and well away from the nuthouse. He guessed he had his answer now.)

Theo, finding his sister unrepentant, settled his gaze on Jerome again instead. "You've been spending quite a lot of time with the hostage girl, haven't you?"

_Well, you're the one with cameras in the room, aren't you?_ Jerome thought, but he didn't say it out loud, thinking it might come across as defensive. That was the _last_ thing he wanted, since he'd suddenly figured out why he'd been summoned.

"Sure, it's as good a way to kill time as any," he answered breezily, snatching up a scone and buttering it liberally.

Theo nodded thoughtfully, accepting this. After a brief pause, he said, "You wouldn't be forming any sort of… unhealthy attachment to her, would you, Jerome?"

_Bingo_. This next part was key. Jerome widened his eyes, putting on a perfect pantomime of innocence. "To a _hostage_?" he asked, mouth full of crumbs.

"To a _pretty_ hostage," Theo said, his expression all conspiratorial good humor that Jerome didn't trust for a _second_. "It would hardly be _unusual_, Jerome. Just something to keep an eye on."

Jerome raised his right hand. "I'll kill her right now if you want," he volunteered earnestly. "Where'd my sword get to?"

Theo laughed, flashing pearly white teeth, and said, "There's no need for _that_. We wouldn't want to waste a perfectly good resource. But consider spending the morning with your teammates, instead. Today's an important day for the four of you; you should make sure to plan it out _meticulously_."

Jerome blinked, mildly surprised. "The _four_ of us, huh? Does that mean Babs—"

"Sure does, Slim," said Barbara teasingly from somewhere behind him—he turned to see her striding confidently into the room, dressed all in white, and she bent over Tabitha to kiss her on the cheek before dropping into the chair beside her. Making cool eye contact with Jerome, she announced, almost mockingly, "_I_ get to play with the _boys_."

Jerome grinned at her—he knew her well enough by now to know that she wasn't the type to get intimidated at too-shiny eyes and the flash of teeth, but it sure didn't stop him from trying. "_Fun_," he practically purred. Barbara's brows darted up like she agreed, and he switched his attention abruptly to Theo once again. "And later on—are we still crashing that charity event with all the rich stiffs?"

"That's the plan," Theo said mildly.

Jerome nodded. _Perfect_. "I have an idea. A way to use the hostage to give the show a little extra flair—and, uh, _neatly dispose_ of her at the same time."

Theo took a sip from his espresso, then said, "Tell me."

* * *

Jerome had told Isabel he'd be back soon. She wasn't sure exactly how to feel about it when he broke his word.

Not that she realized right away: worn out by her unsustainable hyper-vigilance, and without Jane to protect, she'd fallen back asleep shortly after he left. (It was a mark of her exhaustion that she'd half awoken to him dragging her into his arms in the middle of the night as he scooted up beside her on the couch and _hadn't_ immediately raised hell—instead, after confirming to her satisfaction that he wasn't trying to get fresh, she just grumbled something derogatory and jammed her head under his chin so she wouldn't have to see him first thing when she woke up and went straight back to sleep. She hadn't woken up dead, so she figured no harm, no foul.)

She woke up presumably hours later, starving. It was her own fault—she'd let her nerves stop her from eating the night before, even though she'd been hungry _then_. It was just another indignation to stack on top of all the others that had accumulated, the fact that she had to rely on her captors—on _Jerome_—to bring her food, to care for her, that she couldn't do it herself.

Out of spite, she went to the bathroom and drank water from the tap until her stomach was too full to complain anymore. Then she took a few seconds to glare at herself in the mirror. Two nights in the hands of the Maniax meant that the black liner and glittering purple shadow she'd carefully applied to her eyes before the show was all but gone, and she looked tired and pissed off, which she thought was appropriate. Her hair was a wreck from two nights sleeping on the couch—one of those nights spent jammed up against an annoyingly touchy sleeper—and the undercut, as it was meant to, drew her eye to the line of piercings that ran down her ear, the usual chain and cross conspicuously missing.

The reminder made her flush. She leaned forward, dampening her palm with cold water and then laying it flat against the nape of her neck, hoping it would cool the rush of anger and embarrassment she was feeling. _Well, now I'll have to live with that memory forever_—the look on his face when he drew close, blotting out everything else, the unfamiliar sobriety of his expression and the little chill of horror it sparked in her, the _certainty_ that he was going to kiss her.

Worst of all: that little id of a half-smothered voice in her that, despite the danger of the situation, despite her anger at him for putting her there to _begin_ with, wished he _would_.

The shame of it made her flush hotter. She'd thought better of herself than that. Her integrity was important to her; the thought that she'd almost been willing to compromise it for a thrill and a pretty face upset and worried her—as did the fact that her contempt of Jerome was cooling, fast.

It was hard to hold onto that contempt after the way he'd talked about growing up under an abusive parent, about the rage that burned quick and bright, always a better option than _helplessness_, better than freezing up after getting hit in the face, better than running scared like a frightened child at the threat of anger. Knowing that there was a _sameness_ to them, to where they'd come from, made it difficult to regard him as the irresponsible, two-dimensional maniac she'd been seeing him as since she first heard of him—moreover, selfishly, she'd felt him _recognize_ her, and that was… new. He'd been correct in practically everything he'd said about her, after all; about the anger, the violence resting just below the surface all the time, just _waiting_ to come out. He'd even been right to assume that she was afraid of David, would feel safer with him dead (something she figured Jerome knew a thing or two about), _wanted_ him dead, to a certain extent.

But the points where he was _wrong_? Those were major. He thought Isabel should _unlock_ that violence, give into it, seize and use it like a sort of inheritance, the way he was doing it. Isabel was convinced that doing _that_ would just start the cycle from which she'd suffered all over again.

That's what Jerome didn't understand. She'd only _win_ if she could _break_ the cycle, if she could become _better_ than her stepdad, than Jane's dad, than Jerome's mother. Becoming a violent creature of impulse, doing and taking whatever she wanted without regard for innocent bystanders, the way Jerome had, would just put her down there in the pit _with_ them. The thought turned her stomach.

And yet it was getting harder to hate Jerome for making that choice. Certainly he was as reprehensible as ever, still a killer and still careless, unkind, and _unsafe_, for her and for everyone else in the city.

But the recognition was there, now. She saw herself in him—or more accurately, the twisting, capricious, ugly parts of herself that she kept leashed tight, and as much as she was repelled by the things he did, she was pulled in, too, irresistibly so, dragged by that secret side of her that whispered _I want to see_ and _yes, yes, I understand_. He'd taken back the power they'd both been robbed of as children and wielded it in a loud, swaggering way that made her envious, a way that she'd never manage if she stuck to the path of altruism she was determined to follow. It wasn't enough to sway her, but it was still a temptation. _He_ was a temptation.

The grimness of her expression in the mirror made her laugh, suddenly and without much real humor. "God," she sighed, dousing her palm in cold water again and running it over her hair, smoothing it down a little. "I have _got_ to get out of here. Before this place makes me crazy."

* * *

**A/N** \- We're starting to wrap up here, folks. Couple more chapters left before this part is done- though those chapters will be _long_.

If you've got questions, comments, or just want to yell at me about something, send it all this way, I thrive on that shit. Till next time!


	7. 7

**7.**

_And you put your words in my mouth till now  
__And I let you turn me around till now  
__And you been messing me around till now  
__And I let you push me around till now_… - Banks | **Till Now**

Hours passed, and Jerome didn't come back.

Isabel was about ready to start wrecking shit.

It wasn't even that she _wanted_ him around, especially not _now_, now that she'd pinned down the exact source of her attraction to him, but handling Jerome undeniably proved a challenge, which was a welcome distraction from _cabin fucking fever_. At this point, she'd almost take Greenwood, just for a break from the _waiting_.

(Almost.)

She'd watched a lot of news, quickly becoming sick of it—GCN covered the Maniax, of course, knew that the colorful gang would boost ratings, and the coverage told her what Jerome had been up to the day before and why he'd come back reeking of gasoline. (There was a shaky phone video one of the girls on the bus had managed to take—Jerome in white, never more than halfway in any given frame, like a cryptid, but clearly thriving at the center of attention, standing tall enough that his head brushed the roof of the bus and dousing the whole thing down in gasoline without any apparent concern that he was getting half-soaked himself. Isabel gave the TV screen the finger. It didn't make her feel any better.)

Aside from the report of the failed bus torching, however, GCN knew frustratingly little. She'd thought maybe Jerome was doing something horrible and that they could keep her in the loop, but whatever he was doing, there was no word. They weren't even talking about Jane, except a little banner that reiterated that she had been "found"—no mention of the Maniax, but Isabel suspected that was her father's influence more than anything else.

She finally shut off the TV in a silent fury and turned to more physical pursuits, hoping that _doing_ something would burn off all the nervous energy building up. She cleaned up the spilled food from the night before—_she_ hadn't spilled it, but it was something to do, and anyway, the faint but persistent smell was starting to make her feel sick. She paced. She drank more water after her hunger made an angry reappearance. She paced some more. The afternoon wore on.

When he came back, she'd had about enough, and was making a knife out of the bathroom mirror.

After stripping a couch cushion and ripping it into a few cloths to use as a grip, she broke it with the vase she'd been eyeing when Jerome had wanted to know how she would kill him. After dusting the stray little fragments of glass off the sink, she leaned forward to examine the spiderwebbed mirror, and, using the cloth to protect her hands, she pried a large, wicked-looking shard out from near the bottom.

She was busy wrapping the vaguely-rectangular base of it in the remnants of the couch's upholstery when Jerome appeared, too preoccupied to hear him coming until he was right up on her. She registered the change in light, first, out of the corner of her eye, the darkness of his silhouette in the doorway, and she jumped a mile, turning defensively to face him, holding the makeshift knife down by her waist, at the ready.

He grinned, and she frowned back at him, initially confused: he wasn't wearing the lazy pajamas she was used to seeing him in, or the showy white jacket with its straps and buckles. He was—was he dressed like a _cop_?

He took off his hat and tossed it over his shoulder. There was blood streaked across the lower half of his face, and the tip of his tongue darted out, swiping a bit off his upper lip as he ran a hand through his hair, smoothing it down. "Well, whaddya say?" he greeted her, ever-so-casually.

Isabel's mouth had gone abruptly dry. She swallowed hard. He'd clearly _just_ come from the scene of something awful, and she wasn't sure whose blood was on him, and despite the lightness of his tone she caught a flash of his eyes and saw that they looked black again, with his pupils blown wide the way they had been at the prospect of _taking_ from her the day before. She swallowed again, trying to find her voice, to ask a question, but all she managed to say was, "Wh—wha—?"

She wasn't expecting him to _rush_ her.

Later, she would be proud that at the very least, she didn't freeze this time. She lifted her makeshift knife and took a swipe at him as he came at her, he twisted in the limited bathroom space, and she felt the glass catch and tear cloth but not flesh. Then he was gripping her wrist hard enough to make her cry out, spinning her while she was distracted by the pain and shoving her back until the edge of the sink caught her against her lower back.

Her breath escaped her all at once, and she couldn't seem to get it back in order to ask him what this was, what he was doing. Keeping one hand tight around her arm, he used the other to grip her by the jaw, his fingers pressing hard enough to hurt, and she reached up blindly, grabbing at his wrist and trying to pull him off her, to no avail. He gave her arm a quick wrench and, afraid that resisting him would result in a broken wrist—she could _not_ afford that right now—she moved along with him, turning her hand and losing her grip on the knife in the process.

It clattered to the floor, which she hoped would incentivize Jerome to let her go, give her some breathing room, but instead he moved closer, using the hand on her face to push her back. Her only option was to climb backwards up onto the sink, which she did reflexively in an effort to ease the pressure, and then immediately regretted—she suddenly found herself perched precariously on the sink's edge, a shattered mirror at her back and an unpredictable killer just inches away.

Jerome let her go abruptly. She lost her balance, tilted backwards, flailed, and gripped him hard by the elbows, using him to stabilize herself. She just had time to see him look at her with a funny little smile, just a quirk of the lips, for once not showing off the dangerous rows of teeth, then he leaned in close to her—she flinched back, trying to blindly navigate the space behind her, to make as much use of it as she could without getting cut, before she realized that he was speaking _so_ softly into her ear.

"You need to play along now," he said, and she went still, her hands tightening around his arms, listening intently. "The whole room is rigged with cameras—they're watching and listening. My boss wants to kill you."

He leaned back, but not far, bending his neck to rest his forehead against hers, a question in his eyes. _Understand?_

She knew full well she couldn't trust him to look out for her best interests, especially at the sacrifice of _his_, and she was incapable of fully believing a word that came out of his mouth—but she believed him _enough_, at least, to give him an infinitesimal little nod.

She _saw_ the wicked little glint in his eyes before his wide hands found her hips and he bent further down to push his mouth against hers. She just didn't _care_. She was a little too overwhelmed, by the frustration of the day and the confusion about Jerome and now the _staggering_ (if not unexpected) information that the shot-caller of this little operation, whoever that might be, wanted her dead. She couldn't handle all of it. She chose to work through the frustration, and forget the rest.

The warm press of his lips was light and, frankly, maddening. He was smiling, too, she could feel it, and like many of his smiles, she could tell that this wasn't a _good_ one, that he was _laughing_ at her. So she snarled against him, thinking _fuck it, one of us has to be the feral one_, and opened her mouth, just enough to scrape at him with her teeth and to taste the blood still wet on his skin. That was enough—his hands tightened on her, convulsive, and all at once his tongue was in her mouth, with more of that taste of blood, and she parted her knees so he could crowd in close between them.

For someone who professed an aversion to violence, who held violent _men_ in particular contempt, she was alarmingly into this. She figured her therapist would have something to say about that, if she had the money to pay for one.

One of Jerome's hands slid to the small of her back, and the hand still on her hip dragged her flush against him even as he bent over her, urging her to lean back. Dizzied, she did, essentially letting him _dip_ her in the abbreviated space, even though she was faintly aware that she was compromising her grip on him, that he could just let her go and drop her straight into the broken mirror. She had no doubt that he was fully capable of doing something like that, would think it was funny, but at the moment, she was gambling on him having more fun keeping her more or less where she was—and he _was_ having fun, at least if what she could feel between her legs was any indication.

He broke the kiss abruptly, and as he went to suck a bruise at the side of her neck, he chuckled, a low, self-satisfied sound that she felt in her bones. She shuddered at the pleasant little pain of his mouth on her skin, trying and failing to catch her breath, and then he was leaning up to speak into her ear again—she had to concentrate hard to hear him over the sound of her own heartbeat, thrumming away loud in her head.

"Tomorrow," he growled, low and quiet, "we're taking you out. Offering you as a… sacrificial lamb to this city you want so much to _help_." He laughed, once, right in her ear, a high, wild sound with the edge of hysteria to it, and she thought for a second that he was going to _fully_ lose it, that the one giggle would lead to more, and more and more and more until he just _couldn't stop_. Feeling fear rushing in, mingling with her arousal, she fought him for a second, trying to shift fully upright again, but his hands were tight on her, holding her in place, and he loomed over her, his body blocking her escape.

The little struggle seemed to ground him, though. When he spoke again, his voice was even quieter, and devoid of laughter—he sounded almost _somber_. "I can help. But I have to know you want me to. You have to _ask_ me, Isabel."

He leaned away. His hands loosened on her, though he didn't let go completely, and he took a single step back, finally giving her space to think.

Slowly, Isabel righted herself, her guard fully up. She felt like she was getting a good look at him for the first time since he'd reappeared, eyes still unsettlingly black (for all she knew that they weren't, they were _green_, so why did they _look like that_), and his mouth bright and red from their brief exertions. The blood on his face was smeared, and she wondered if she should feel alarmed that she didn't feel _sick_ at the understanding that she must be wearing some of it on _her_ face, now. (She still didn't even know whose blood it was.)

She knew what this was. It was a mockery, just one more little humiliation, his way of reminding her that without him, she had no hope, and she was strongly tempted to spit in his face as an answer. She didn't, though, aware that she could be signing her own death warrant with such a careless act. She wasn't quite ready to do that.

_But still_. She was tempted. He couldn't just take the decision away from her, allow her to preserve her pride—he had to make her _say_ it, that she needed him, to admit that she couldn't save herself.

_Except_—

All at once, Isabel felt a sense of sudden, perfect clarity, and with it, calm. She _could_ save herself. She just didn't like the way she had to _do_ it—but this was life or death, and she was _done_ being locked away from the world in this room, never knowing which day might end in her being target practice for a bunch of killers.

Jerome spotted the change in her demeanor, and his head twitched slightly sideways, betraying his curiosity. She smiled at him. For once, he didn't take the opportunity to grin back at her, instead narrowing his eyes like he was trying to figure out just what she was up to, right up until she reached up behind him and grabbed him by the hair, yanking his head back until he was practically facing the ceiling.

She was no fool—she knew he could resist, could break her hold at any second if he chose, but she also spotted the pulse point racing at the base of his throat, saw the twitch of his Adam's apple as he swallowed hard, and otherwise, he held perfectly still. _Good. That means I'm on the right track._

She drew him in close to her again—obediently, he stepped forward, and she felt a rush of adrenaline as his body pressed against hers, flush between her legs again, their chests close together. Tilting her head back to look closely at his upturned face, she spotted something she hadn't noticed before, a faint little tinge of blue at the edge of his jaw, where she'd hit him the night before. It hadn't been obvious to her until she'd gotten this close.

She wanted to laugh. Instead, she reached up and ran the bottom ridge of her teeth against the bruise, lightly, but she felt him shudder against her at the contact. The urge to laugh was back, stronger this time, but she fought it off, choosing instead to finally speak up. "_Jerome_." The word was little more than a breath. He tensed, and she tightened her grip on his hair—not _quite_ enough to hurt him. Just enough to make sure she had his attention.

She hesitated, as much because this took some effort from her as because she wanted to see if he'd wait, and he did, still and silent, his unprecedented patience surprising her. The seconds stretched out, one long after the other, until finally, she whispered the simple words, "_Save me_," and feather-light, pressed her lips to his bruised jaw.

He _growled_, an awful, low, predatory sound, and for a second, she was certain she'd made a terrible mistake. Then he thrust his hips against hers, grinding into her with a pleasant force that prompted her to release a (frankly, embarrassing) whimper and wrap one leg around him as if it was even possible to pull him in closer to her than he already was, and his hand was grasping her face again, just as painfully as before, but she found herself not caring anymore as she met him halfway, determined to kiss him just as savagely as he seemed to intend to kiss _her_.

And it _was_ savagery, a little clumsier and more aggressive this time, mouths meeting with bruising pressure, teeth gnashing together, the whole thing suffused with the pervasive, salt-copper taste of drying blood, and it was by no means the best kiss Isabel had ever had, and certainly nothing in the way of _romance_ or _tenderness_, but as far as working out fury and frustration and the general _I hate you but I'm also not sure that's true_ feelings went, it was _great._

Enough so, in fact, that at some point they even slowed down. Isabel couldn't help but think it was a trick, but she also couldn't make herself pull away from the heat of him, from the slower, lazier, almost curious kissing that followed the angry rush of the initial make-out. At length, though, she broke the surface of the haze long enough to realize that her lips were beginning to feel bruised and raw, and with a sigh, she pulled away from him, dipping her head down to signal that she was done, and he didn't try to follow her (she was glad. She wasn't sure she had the strength to make the decision for _both_ of them, to move on from this pleasant distraction to… whatever came next).

It was quiet for a few seconds, the two of them catching their breath, and then, sounding horrendously smug, Jerome said, "_Told_ you you were into me."

Isabel glanced up at him, still too blitzed on endorphins to be really mad at him for rubbing it in, and almost immediately laughed aloud. Jerome pulled that face again—head tilted, eyes narrowed curiously, asking _what's funny_ without actually putting voice to the words, and she lifted her hand and very gently swiped a single piece of glitter off of his cheekbone with the tips of her index and middle fingers (surprised, really, that he let her do it), then showed it to him. "I thought this was all gone. Probably should've known better," she told him, and a tired little giggle slipped out of her before she could stop it. The absurdity of the situation was proving to be a little too much for her.

His amusement faded at that point. He glanced at the piece of glitter, then at her face again, and for a split second, something crossed his face, some complicated little micro-expression that she was in no way equipped to read. Then, in a flash, he was all grins again, that performative, near-maniacal smile she'd seen most often the night they'd met.

"_Thanks_ for that," he said, bracing his hands on the sink on either side of her hips and pushing himself up and away from her, backing off a few steps. "That was… _mwah_." He kissed his fingertips and expanded them in a chef's kiss.

Isabel hopped off the sink, suddenly aware that the sturdy ceramic was digging uncomfortably into her thighs. "Sure…?" she said, lowering her eyebrows and looking at him uncertainly. _What are you up to now_?

Of course, with the knowledge that the room was wired with cameras, they couldn't speak clearly now—not that they ever could, but now he had a good _reason_ to act distracted and weird. He snapped his thumbs and index fingers, one after the other, and then pointed a pair of finger guns at her. "_I_ gotta go. You may not want to kill _your_ dad—"

"Stepdad," Isabel corrected him, instantly irked.

"—_or whatever_," he said, wiggling one hand in an approximation of a chattering mouth, "but _mine_ deserves to die, so I gotta go plan that." He turned away, and before she could even begin to decide whether she should try to stop him or not, he whirled back around. "_Oh!_ And, uh, Greenwood's dead."

"_What?_"

"Yeah, I shot him, like, half an hour ago." Jerome chewed his reddened bottom lip for a second, frowning. "For such a talker, he went down _really_ easy." He seemed lost in thought for a few more second, then snapped out of it, and waved his hands at her dismissively. "Aw, no big loss any way you slice it, am I right? Gotta go. See ya tomorrow, Izzy!"

"Jerome," she said, suddenly annoyed by his flippancy as he turned away and left the bathroom. He didn't answer, and she wasn't sure what she'd even ask him if he did, but she still found herself trailing after him, saying his name again, and again, increasing in volume and irritability until he closed the door behind him, and as the key turned in the lock, she slammed her shoulder up against the solid wood—more to vent her irritation than because she thought it would do any good.

Then she was back to waiting, this time with the added bonus of trying not to think about what she'd just done.

* * *

The next day was a hellish haze of tension and interminable _waiting_. Jerome didn't come back, and neither did anyone else. No one even came to bring her food—but then, they were planning to kill her, so why would they?

Isabel tried not to lose it completely. She tried not to act any differently now that she knew the room was wired, tried not to tip them off to the fact that she was aware she was being watched. She tried not to entertain the possibility that Jerome was just jerking her around, as usual, that he had no intentions of helping her at all and when the time came would just let her die for a laugh, because the more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that that was _exactly_ what he was planning.

She hoped desperately that the action she'd taken, issuing that little command-disguised-as-request (accompanied by the whisper of a threat of that violence in her by which he seemed so captivated) had convinced him that she was interesting enough to keep around. She'd made the decision in a flood of endorphins and adrenaline, and she was second-guessing it now, wondering if he _really_ was the sort of guy to tolerate—or _enjoy_—being pushed around. Given his background, she'd have thought he'd revolt against anyone else taking control, but then, given _her_ background, she should find someone like him entirely repulsive. In theory, she knew that was how trauma worked sometimes: putting people again and again in situations that resembled their original traumas, giving them the opportunity to relive and rework it, to make it turn out _differently_. On some level, she knew it was the _choosing_ it that turned it from ugliness into something else, to something cathartic, but still, knowing the source made thinking about it an unpleasant experience. She tried her best not to think about it.

She killed time. She slept. She watched more GCN, incidentally finding out about the Maniax raid on the police station, which just sparked more questions: were they even the Maniax anymore? They were two down, and by her count that just left Jerome, Barbara, and the big guy—Barbara seemed mostly uninvolved in the public crime spree, and the big guy didn't seem to be much in the way of brains, so had the gang technically disintegrated? Was this just Jerome's show now? She doubted it—he'd mentioned a boss, and of course, Jane had figured out from the start that someone was bankrolling them, that the Maniax weren't acting alone. Isabel hadn't had a lot of time to think about the invisible hand guiding things behind the scenes, but she had plenty of time _now_, and the more she thought about it, the more uneasy she felt.

Did "the boss" resent Jerome for killing Greenwood and effectively cutting their numbers in half? Or was it just considered collateral damage of disposable bodies? Either way, it wasn't good news for Jerome, and she wondered if he realized that, or if he was too dazzled by his own charisma to take care. For better or worse, she'd thrown her lot in with him now, and she needed him to be on his toes with this kind of thing. She wished she'd thought to bring this up with him earlier—not that they'd have gotten to make much out of it, under watch as they apparently were, or that he'd bother to _listen_ to her.

She waited.

When they came for her, she was almost relieved enough at the break in the hours and hours of tension to go without a fight. Still, that would've looked suspicious if they really were watching her, for her to go through the trouble of making a knife and then totally abandon it, especially since it had miraculously survived being dropped on the bathroom floor, so when Barbara walked in with the huge guy—Jerome had called him Aaron—she readily (if wearily) lifted the knife.

"Please," said Barbara, sounding bored. "You _know_ it's no use."

"I have to try, though, right?" asked Isabel, going for chipper and hearing her own voice fall flat.

Barbara closed her eyes for a long second, lids twitching slightly in annoyance, and then she forced a smile and said, "Aaron. Be a doll and grab her for me, will you?"

The big guy smiled at her, hearts practically surfacing in his eyes, and then turned to Isabel, going abruptly flinty. She was ready, slashed at him when she approached, and unlike Jerome, he didn't dodge—she got him across the chest, but it didn't matter. She might as well have been cutting stone, and he wrapped his arms around her, flattening her arms to her sides and crushing her against his big chest, the warm blood soaking into her formerly-white shirt.

Isabel made a strangled sound of rage, feeling panic flare as she realized she was well and truly trapped. Barbara approached from the side so that she'd be sure to _see_ her coming, using her teeth to delicately, slowly uncap a syringe filled with something clear.

"What _is_ that?" Isabel demanded, voice harsh with fear as she writhed against Aaron, whose grip was implacable.

"Don't be a baby," Barbara admonished her, her expression schooled into something like disapproval, though there was a delight in her eyes that gave her away.

"Barbara," Isabel warned her, knowing that threats were empty but unable to help herself, "if you stick that thing in me—"

Barbara lunged at her, unearthly quickly for a pretty girl who grew up in the lap of luxury, and Isabel felt the sting _after_ Barbara was already depressing the plunger (not that she could have done anything about it). Isabel let out another angry sound, this one closer to a scream, but whatever was in the syringe acted quickly, and her vision began swimming almost immediately.

Barbara's smile was wide, almost manic, and she split into two as Isabel felt her knees give out. "Careful, Aaron," she said, her voice going all _echo-y_. "Don't drop her—"

—and despite the order, Isabel felt herself falling, falling fast, even as she registered the feel of Aaron's arms solid around her still, and then—

Nothing.

* * *

The plan was simple.

He'd start the magic show, Barbara playing the pretty ditzy assistant, and after a few easy tricks, they'd pull the old _girl-sawed-in-half_ move, with _Isabel_ in the role of the girl. Of course, the trick would take an ugly, bloody turn, and _that_ would key the fat cat audience in to the fact that there was something _very_ wrong with their entertainment, much too late to get out or _do_ anything about it, of course.

Except Jerome had an alternative plan, one he hadn't shared with Theo, who had already proven too much of a panderer to Gotham's wealthy in that whole episode with Jane and her father to let him get away with it. He'd heard that Bruce Wayne, boy billionaire, would be in attendance, and figured that it would spark _much_ more shock and awe among Gotham's glitterati if one of their _own_ was made a target.

(Besides, as much as he liked Theo, he figured it was high time to demonstrate that he was his own man, and followed orders only at his own whim. At any rate, it would all work out for the better, and at the end, the Galavans would recognize him as a criminal mind on the level of their own—not brute force like _Aaron_ or _Greenwood_, but a planner and a visionary in his own right.)

So as soon as the event planner left him alone backstage, he went to the case where a drugged Isabel had been stashed, unlocked it, and lifted the lid.

She was… conscious, if you could call it that. She scowled at the sudden light, lifted a hand to block it, and sat up, looking confused. Then she looked at his face and _giggled_.

He tilted his head. "What's funny?"

Isabel sat up and giggled again, the light sound spilling out of her. (She should be drugged more often. He always knew there was a sense of humor hiding behind that scowl and that righteous fury.) "When did you grow a _beard_?" she asked, and brushed her fingertips over the _impressive_ fake soup-strainer glued to his upper lip.

"You like it?" he asked, raising a rakish brow.

"No," she said, meeting his eyes—hers were all pupil, the effects of the sedative—and laughed again. "It's _ridiculous_."

"That's the point," he said brightly, and reached down, getting an arm under her, and dragged her out of the box. When he set her on her feet, she slumped, and he rolled his eyes as he pulled her into something resembling an upright position. "_All_ right, come on, baby doll, we gotta move fast," he said.

She _whined_. "_You_ move fast. I'm tired."

"Oh, you want to go back to that room you've been locked in for three days?" he asked.

He could see her working to concentrate. Little lines appeared between her eyebrows as she frowned, and finally, she decided, "_No_. That place _sucked_."

"Then _come on_."

That, at least, was enough to make her put in a token effort, halfway helping him as he guided her across the room towards the vent midway up the wall. He tilted her against the wall next to it, and she willingly leaned on it for support as he pulled one of his knives and used it to work at the top screws holding the vent cover closed.

"Barbara stuck a needle in me," she complained, rubbing a spot low on her neck, below the hickey he'd given her the night before (which was coming along nicely, he was pleased to note).

"Yeah?" he asked distractedly, concentrating on the screws. "How do ya feel?"

She took a second, and then giggled again, spreading her arms out wide before clutching abruptly at the wall again to keep her balance. "Like _air_."

He paused, glanced at her, and then cackled, making an effort to keep the sound quiet to avoid drawing unwanted attention. "You're tripping _balls_, aren't you, Izzy?"

She laughed again. He got one screw loose, and then, as he worked at the other, she said, "You know you're the only… the only person I've _ever_, _ever_ let call me _Izzy_?"

He flashed her a quick grin. "I'm special, huh?"

She made a grumpy little sound. "Yeah, _right_. Like I could make you _stop_ if I wanted to." He raised his eyebrows, paused again, and looked over at her. Her expression shifted into something outright mischievous, and she said, "But you _are_ special."

_That_ was tempting, and he had to shake it off before he could re-focus on his work. It was difficult, though, because Isabel kept talking: "You're a _good kisser_ for a boy, you know that?"

His hands stilled again—she was just offering him _opening after opening_, and it was _maddening_ that he didn't have the time to take advantage of them—and then resumed their work. "I'm aware," he commented idly.

"_Ooh, I'm aware,_" she repeated mockingly, in a low voice he supposed was meant to resemble his. The last screw came loose, and he pulled the grate down, wincing at the metallic groan that accompanied the motion. He glanced quickly over his shoulder, and when no one appeared to investigate, he looked back at Isabel and beckoned her near.

"Come on. Time to go."

"Whaaaat… are we doing?" she asked, obediently swaying close to him.

He pointed at the vent opening. "I'm gonna lift you through _there_, and you're gonna crawl until you find a way out. Sound good?"

She wrinkled her nose. "_Air vents?_ Jerome, that's _so_ cliché."

"Clichés are a cliché for a reason," he told her with a quick grin. "They _work_. Now _come on_."

He was taken aback when she abruptly wrapped her arms around his neck and planted a sloppy, closed-lips kiss on his mouth—he had to catch her midway through, to keep her from falling (_letting_ her fall would be _funny_, but he was playing the big game now, couldn't afford his usual tendencies to indulge in every whim that crossed his mind).

She pulled back and looked at him, still all hazy, and said, very seriously, "You're me."

"Okay," he said to placate her.

"I _like_ you because _you're me_," she repeated intently.

There was a lot to say, and no time to say it. Molding his expression into something uncharacteristically serious, he said, "Are you going to find your way out of here, Isabel?"

She rolled her eyes. "Yes. _Fine_."

"Then let's _go_," he said, and untangled her arms from his neck, stooping to grab her by the legs and lift her up so she could climb into the vent.

It didn't go as smoothly as he had hoped. "Ugh, Jesus _Christ_, Izzy, you have the density of a _dying star_."

"_Hey_," was her rather weak protest as she tried to pull herself up.

"I mean it," he said, his voice strained as he struggled to lift her up—he was strong, but she was _heavy_. "I mean, you have nice legs, but at _what cost?_"

"I will _kick_ you in your _motherfucking face_," she threatened, still lazily, but sounding a little more like her usual self, and then most of her upper body was on the ledge, and the weight lifted out of his arms as she scrambled up into the opening. Then she shuffled around so that she was perched at the edge of the opening, looking down at him.

He looked back up at her, and when she reached out a hand, he indulged her and took it. Her eyes were still drug-hazed, but again, she sounded more like herself when she said, "I didn't think you'd do it."

He pulled a noncommittal face. "That makes two of us."

"No. Really. I owe you for this." (That was how he _knew_ she was still in the grips of the drug—sober Isabel would never admit such a thing.) "Thank you."

Jerome was uncomfortable in the face of such sincerity, even when he was acting in his own self-interest (and this _was_ his own self-interest, nothing self-sacrificial about it; he wanted to find Izzy later, after the Maniax inevitably disbanded—she had real promise as a project, a subject for corruption), so he opted for the drama that he typically used to shield himself from discomfort and kissed the back of her hand with a flourish.

"I'll see you again," he promised, and tucked her hand back up onto the ledge. "Now get _out_ of here."

She nodded, and slowly turned—he heard the echo of her as she began to crawl along the vent. He didn't waste time, collecting the screws from the floor and using his knife again to close the cover back into place. Once that was done, he gently touched his false mustache, making sure it was still in place.

"Ready, slick?"

He turned to see Barbara in the doorway of the room, all dressed up in her frilly assistant gear, her mask already secure. He had no idea how long she'd been there, but he found he didn't care—if she'd witnessed his little treachery, she might tell Theo, sure, but he was sure that by the time the show was over, Theo would have really, _truly_ seen his real potential, and by that time, he would be bulletproof.

He flashed her a big grin, and gave her a little bow, one arm stretched out long behind him. "Let's knock 'em dead."

* * *

Isabel knew there was something wrong with her, but she didn't have the energy to sort herself out, to put everything back in place. Because Jerome had told her to, she crawled, moving along the vent that was barely big enough to accommodate her body, until she reached a grate that looked out along a room full of people. There, tired, she decided to take a rest.

She witnessed it all.

Her senses slowly coming back to her—not quickly enough, nowhere _near_ quickly enough for her to _do_ anything about it—she saw Jerome and Barbara put on their farce of a magic show, take the crowd hostage, toy with a handful of innocents, target Bruce Wayne. She saw it when the strange man Barbara had knocked out earlier woke up again as things veered towards a climax. As if in a dream, she saw him stick a knife in the side of Jerome's neck.

She didn't feel anything as Jerome fell back, as he breathed a last death rattle, a sound that resonated through the room. Finally, once the crowd started making panicked noises and moving en masse towards the exit, she got the gumption to kick at the grate—it was thin metal, not designed to withstand a human attack, and it bent, and _bent,_ and then the screws flew out of the wall and the grate banged open and she slid out of the opening, knocking her head on the upper side as she went.

She wandered over to Jerome, and no one stopped her, everyone too busy either getting out or trying to figure out what had happened. He was lying on his back, a puddle of blood wide beneath him, the gash in his neck just trickling now. His face was frozen in a horrible grinning rictus. There was no light in his eyes. Against all odds, against the secret little belief she held that it wasn't _possible_, he was dead.

She felt a warm hand on her shoulder, and turned to see the man who'd killed him.

He looked at her with large, dark eyes, painfully sincere, and his hand tightened on her shoulder as she met his gaze.

"It's all right now," he said seriously as she stared at him, wondering where he'd come from, why he was talking to her. She could feel the wetness of Jerome's blood on his hand, tacky against her skin. "You're safe."

* * *

Isabel hated police.

She'd still been caught in the aftereffects of the drugs when she'd surfaced outside with the rest of the charity ball-goers, too hazy to lie when a cop caught her by the elbow and asked who she was and why she was there. She'd told him that she had been held by the Maniax for the last few days.

Now she was in an interrogation room, staring down a cop who either _didn't_ care to hide the fact that he wasn't about to believe a word she said, or _couldn't_.

"You claim they kept you hostage for several days—in a _penthouse_," said the cop, who'd introduced himself as Detective Gordon, now. "How'd you manage to escape?"

"I didn't," Isabel said softly, tiredly. Logically, she knew the best course of action was to stay silent, to insist on a lawyer before saying anything, but she was _so_ tired, and although she _felt_ like herself, she wasn't entirely writing off the idea that the drugs might still be in her system, so she found herself feeling like just answering honestly would get her out of here faster, despite her inherent mistrust of cops. "Jerome got me out."

"Jerome Valeska," the cop said, his tone skeptical and impatient, and he said the name wrong, pronouncing it so it rhymed with _Alaska_. "The kid who burst into this station _yesterday_ and butchered a bunch of cops in cold blood. _He_ saved you?"

Isabel lifted her hand to rub the space between her eyebrows where a headache was forming, likely an aftereffect of whatever Barbara had drugged her with. "He likes me. _Liked_. Me," she corrected herself, feeling a weird, unidentifiable twist in her belly at the past tense.

Gordon stared at her. He all but bared his teeth. "Jerome Valeska doesn't like _anyone_," he pointed out, his voice suddenly lower, rougher.

Isabel was in no mood to fuck around. She just said, "I'd have said the same thing, but here I am."

Gordon leaned forward onto his elbows, getting a good look at her. She saw his eyes drop to the hickey Jerome had given her, livid purple against her skin. He said, "You sure you didn't know him before all this?"

"You accusing me of something, Detective?" she asked before she could stop herself. She knew that bitchiness got cops all up in arms, got them resentful at the idea that their authority was being questioned, but she couldn't _help_ herself, too annoyed at his none-too-subtle implication that _she_ was some sort of accessory to the Maniax's _bullshit_.

"Just saying," he said, his expression shifting into something a little too casual as he leaned back, crossed one leg over the other at the knee, like he'd figured everything out, hadn't a care in the world. "He's a cute guy, around your age, am I right? You know, you wouldn't be the first girl in the world to fall for a bad boy."

Isabel narrowed her eyes. She made an effort to relax her shoulders, to look as unstressed and unaffected as possible before she said, "Jane Vanderholt."

"Jane Vanderholt?" he asked, straightening up, uncrossing his legs as he got a whiff of a lead.

"She's my best friend, and she was kidnapped right alongside me. They let her go a couple of days before I got away, I don't know why. Check my story against hers, if you can get her rich asshole father to let you bring her in. Maybe then you'll be willing to accept that I'm telling the truth."

Gordon looked thoughtful, and slightly less like he thought she was a scumbag than he had before. He said, "We can do that. In the meantime, the station doctor should check you out. If you were drugged, we want to make sure there's nothing nasty hiding in your bloodstream."

"That… would be good," she said, slumping back against her chair despite herself.

Gordon stared at her for a moment, and then—she couldn't tell if it was out of guilt or if he was looking for some kind of reaction—he said, "You're safe now. Nobody's going to take you again."

"Of _course_ not," she said, cocking her head with a fake, brittle brightness. "Jerome's dead. It's not like he's coming back."

* * *

**A/N** \- Perpetually-shifting, emotionally and sexually fraught power dynamics between not-quite couples? In _my_ stories? …yeah it's entirely likely and totally expected, this meme format doesn't work here, my apologies.

The boy's dead but we all know he's not going to stay that way! Jerome will mount his grand return in the epilogue next week. Isabel will have a thing or two to say about it. If you would like to yell at me, I'm right here listening :)


	8. epilogue

**A/N** \- 1. socio _of course_ I missed you, and I'm absolutely tickled by all the alternatives for Jerome's name you dredged up, lol  
2\. I'm playing a bit fast and loose with the timeline here because there's about a year and a half in real time between Jerome's appearance in season 2 and Jerome's appearance in season 3, but a _lot_ happens and it could realistically have been several years, so I'm keeping it vague (in the neighborhood of 2 years) until I have time to review the show. Please be patient with me, and enjoy the read :)

* * *

**Epilogue**

_When I think about you, oh-oh-oh  
__When I think about you, oh-oh-oh  
__When I think about you, oh-oh-oh  
_—_flowers grow out of my grave, grave, grave!_ \- Dead Man's Bones | **Flowers Grow Out of My Grave**

Being alive again felt _strange_.

Part of it was the whole… memory aspect. He knew who he was, he knew how he felt and how he was supposed to act, but whenever he tried to nail down specifics, things got… fuzzy. Perhaps more unsettling was the memory of _being dead_. He would have thought the experience would be like sleep: just nothingness, an utter lack of consciousness. It was, and it wasn't. Death was… _long_. If the date was correct, he'd only been out of the game for a year or two, but it felt like _millennia_, just suspended in _nothingness_.

He'd lied to Lee Thompkins, though, for no reason other than that the lie sounded better, and he wanted to. Death hadn't been darkness. It was _white_, nothing but white, relentless and empty and _blinding_.

When he tried to think about it too much it… _did_ something to his brain, struck him with something like a pain, except it wasn't a pain, and sparked physical spasms. That was okay. He didn't necessarily _want_ to think about it, not now that there was so much to _do_, to catch up on.

And, the best part: he had a _cult_, and he'd only had to die to get it. Really made a guy wonder why he hadn't done all this _earlier_.

After blowing the power plant, taking out an unfortunate Don (Dean… Dennis… whatever the guy's name was; it kept slipping out of his mind) in the process, Jerome hooked up with the handful of cult members he was planning to take as backup to Wayne Manor. He'd told them not to show up without a change of clothes (the cop uniform was cozy and all, but not exactly befitting the leader of Gotham's biggest and brightest cult), and they didn't disappoint, bringing him a white number that looked appropriately messianic. He changed right there on the street to give the followers a thrill, careful not to get any blood on it, then became fully conscious of a little germ of a thought that had been steadily growing throughout the afternoon: a single word, running through his mind over and over again.

_Isabel. Isabel. Isabel._

He paused, tried to trace the thought to a memory, but he couldn't even manage to rustle up a face to match to the name. After a moment, he realized that he was thinking like someone who _didn't_ have hundreds of people obsessed with every detail of his life at his disposal.

He snapped his fingers. Three people appeared eagerly in front of him, like magic. He focused on the nearest one, a tall, painfully skinny kid with green hair, and said, "Isabel."

It came out as a croak—his vocal cords hadn't come back quite as fresh as the rest of him—but the kid's eyes widened in understanding.

"Isabel Montalvo?"

"Sure," Jerome said. He didn't see a need to admit to the lapse in his memory, or ask any questions that would betray it. He put his hand on the kid's shoulder, looked him in the eye, thoroughly enjoying the fanatic shine he saw there. "Why don't you go and… _get_ her."

"You, uh… you want her alive?"

"Oh, if it's not too much trouble," Jerome said lightly. "Uh—bring her to the boardwalk, would you, pal?"

"Yes, Jerome," the kid said reverently, and quickly peeled off from the group, waving for several others to follow him. Jerome watched him go, and the repetition of the name in his mind didn't stop, but he didn't mind it as much now that he knew that _something_ was being done about it. Within the hour, he'd know who Isabel was, and why his brain apparently thought he needed to remember her before other important things, like his favorite food, or the look on his mother's face when he'd killed her, or where he'd stashed his favorite knife before he'd died.

That handled, he turned to the car and hopped in, letting some anonymous follower take the wheel. He had a little twerp to kill.

* * *

If there was one good thing about Isabel's encounter with the Maniax, it was that it directly led to her meeting Dr. Lee Thompkins.

After Detective Gordon was finished questioning her, he sent her to get checked out by the station doctor—Lee, still in her dress from the charity gala, gloves on and ready to work. Isabel had stared blankly at her for a moment, a little confused, trying to reconcile the lovely woman's apparent ties to the police with her presence at the gala, but gave up quickly, figuring _whatever, small world_.

Lee's bedside manner was excellent—she had a calming voice and presence, telling Isabel exactly what she was doing and why. Isabel, despite being hungry and tired and ready for all this to be over, was a little dazzled by her, and stayed fairly quiet in self-defense (she hardly wanted to make a fool out of herself in front of the beautiful doctor) until Lee took her blood pressure and made a worried little sound.

"That's strange," she said. "Your blood pressure's high. That's unusual after sedation; if anything it should be low."

"I'm not surprised," muttered Isabel before she could think better of it.

"Oh, yeah? Why's that?"

Isabel kicked herself. _Maybe it's not the wisest thing in the world to go on an anti-cop screed to the doctor that works right here with them_, she thought, and so made a token effort to tone down the truth. "Police... make me uncomfortable."

Lee raised an eyebrow. "Will it do any good if I tell you that most of them just want to help?"

_Don't engage,_ Isabel thought, and immediately engaged. "I just think there are probably better ways to help." _Better than beating confessions out of suspects and being complicit in the protection of a notoriously corrupt force,_ she added mentally, but she had the presence of mind, at least, to keep that quiet.

"Oh, yeah?" Lee asked, not being an asshole about it, just curious. "Like what?"

Because Lee seemed to be asking in good faith, Isabel answered her sincerely. "Helping at the shelters—opening _new_ shelters, specifically ones that don't look too closely at the kids that show up there, just for instance? I—there's just a lot of need in the city that more guns aren't going to do _anything_ to help."

Lee was quiet for a bit, then said, "I actually agree with you. To an extent, anyway. Is that what you do for work?"

"I wish. I'm just a server." Isabel ran her hands over her face at the thought, more tired than ever. "Or _was_, anyway, I probably lost my job after all this."

"No way," Lee said, unflappable, rolling back and pulling off her gloves so she could grab a notepad and pen. "I'm writing down my number. If they try to fire you for missing work because you got _kidnapped_, call me. I'll tear 'em a new one."

To her surprise, Isabel laughed. She didn't actually think her boss would be convinced—he was a notorious hardass—but the gesture was a kind one, and she appreciated it. Shortly thereafter, Lee pronounced her healthy and ready to go, and Isabel finally went home.

(She shared a hole-in-the-wall apartment with Jane, about as close to the Narrows as you could get without actually living on the island. Jane wasn't home, definitely still stuck with her dad. Isabel ate two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, took a shower, and then went to sleep for fourteen hours.)

It turned out that her boss _did_ try to fire her, and Lee _did_ end up intervening to save her job—not that it mattered, because two weeks later, Lee called her up and said, "I have a friend who's setting up a food bank in the Narrows and needs help—mostly admin, accepting and documenting donations, with some public-facing work. It pays—not great, but it's something. I thought of you. Interested?"

Isabel stammered, taken-aback by the unexpected flow of information, then said, "I—don't have any experience—"

"No, but it's the kind of thing you could learn on the fly, and you seem to _care_; that counts for something. What do you think? Should I tell her to set up an interview?"

Isabel hesitated, then thought _what the hell_. She'd meant what she told Jerome, about trying to make things _better_, and felt even more strongly that way after witnessing his violent end. This was a chance to _help_, so she told Lee yes, and thank you.

That was how a year and a half later, at a fresh twenty years old, she was overseeing four food banks in different neighborhoods, with ties (some professional, some more personal—she spent a lot of her limited free time volunteering) to homeless shelters, domestic violence crisis centers, halfway houses, and free clinics across the city. She was very young for her position, but she was tough, motivated, and fearless (after dealing with Jerome, it was hard to be afraid of much), and the field of work was strapped enough for reliable and dedicated workers that she'd moved up quickly. It helped that she knew Lee, who, aside from her official work at the station, put in twenty hours a week at the free clinics and was closely associated with just about everyone else who did charitable work throughout the city.

In fact, over time, and despite their differences (the _cop_ was one of them, the detective who'd interviewed Isabel, who she found out later was Lee's boyfriend—she thought she could do _much_ better), Lee became something of a mentor to her. She'd stayed in touch after Isabel initially got the job, checked in on her, made time for her, and Isabel looked up to her, the initial flare of a crush settling quickly into a deep admiration for Lee's generosity and dedication to bettering the city as she got to know her.

Time passed. Isabel moved forward in what she believed would turn out to be her lifelong career. Lee tried to get her to go to college ("Absolutely not," Isabel said; "I don't do debt and I _have no time_"). Lee split from her cop boyfriend, dated Mario Falcone, married Mario Falcone, and was widowed by her ex, which did not improve Isabel's opinion of him. She left the city, came back, went back to work.

On the day Jerome came back from the dead, Lee tried repeatedly to get in touch with Isabel, to warn her, but Isabel was unreachable at work, taking the rare day off, and unbeknownst to Lee, she had dropped her cell phone in a fountain the previous night and had yet to replace it.

She was spending the day with Jane—Jane, who'd resurfaced about a week after the Maniax had crumbled into nothing (her dad liked to keep her under his thumb, but given that she refused to have anything to do with his money and was already eighteen, it was hard for him). The experience proved beneficial for her as well, in one notable way: as an aspiring actress in Gotham, she was just a face in the crowd, one of many (especially since she refused to use her father's connections to help her find work), but after her abduction, she started getting recognized at auditions. People were interested in what had happened, it made her stick in their minds, and gave her an edge—she started winning roles, and by this time was an established figure in Gotham's huge theater scene, though she still had to keep her serving gig to make ends meet.

(Jane, quiet and shy in private life, transformed on stage: confident, intuitive, with a talent for dialect, no trace of stage fright, and an uncanny ability to look bigger and stronger than she was when it was called for. Isabel loved watching her, always in a state of disbelief at how her friend could practically _shapeshift_ under the right circumstances.)

They still lived together, although now they could afford a slightly safer place than the apartment they'd lived in at eighteen. They could go a week without even seeing each other due to their individual hectic schedules, so the day Jerome came back, they were taking a much-needed day to catch up, sleeping in, getting lunch in midtown, shopping (Isabel needed a new phone, and was _very_ annoyed that she'd end up with a new number and would lose all the contacts she didn't have written down somewhere, whereas Jane wanted to go to McCreary's, a giant used bookstore in the middle of the borough), and catching up.

At the tech store, after choosing a replacement, Isabel searched for Jane, who had wandered off. She found her in front of a wall of TVs all tuned into the news, entranced, and after watching for a few seconds, Isabel saw why.

"Jesus Christ," she hissed through her teeth. "_Those_ guys again?"

Jerome's cult, apparently in some reverence of the fact that Isabel had experienced actual proximity to Jerome before he died—something they all lacked—had tried to recruit her exactly once. It hadn't gone well. She'd left the door and come back with a baseball bat. As they scattered, cackling wildly, she shouted after them that next time, she'd _use_ it. So far there hadn't been a _next time_.

"They've taken over the station," Jane said, her voice barely audible over the chaos onscreen. "They say he's back."

Isabel was certain Jane had misspoken, or that she had misheard, but when Jane didn't say anything else, she said, "But I watched him die."

Jane just shook her head, never looking away from the screen, where a somber-looking reporter outside the station repeated the details of the ongoing hostage situation. "They say he's back," she repeated. "He's supposed to show in just a minute."

Isabel fell silent. _I watched him die,_ she thought to herself again; _I saw his body, he was gone_. Despite that certainty, though, she felt the faintest stir of doubt, and something uncomfortable in her belly, indistinguishable between queasiness and anticipation.

The girls watched as the minutes trickled past, until the broadcast cut abruptly from the police standoff outside of the station to "Jerome." Jane squeaked, and Isabel felt an unpleasant lurch in her chest when she realized what she was seeing, a man wearing a skin "mask" over his own face which she _desperately_ hoped wasn't _actually_ Jerome's—it was shapeless and strange on this new man's face, impossible to tell for sure.

She felt another sick twist, this time in her gut, when she realized that he was imitating Jerome's voice, his lilting cadence—truthfully not doing half-bad, but the _rage_ she felt in response to that realization surprised her. The old familiar anger had faded largely into the background over the last years, to the point where she hadn't felt that blinding, overwhelming fury in a long time. She realized now she'd thought it was gone for good, and might have been troubled at the idea that _this_ was what brought it back if she'd been capable of thinking past the flare of anger. (And what exactly _about_ it was it that made her so mad, anyway? General disrespect towards a boy long dead and gone, who probably didn't _deserve_ respect, dead or not? Or was it just that this imitator _paled_ in comparison to the real thing, had no _idea_ what Jerome was like, hadn't earned the right to be a mouthpiece for him?)

"I think I'm gonna be sick," Jane said faintly.

"Go to the bathroom," Isabel replied, just as quiet—she understood, especially as she watched the imitator adjust his "face," re-settling the eye holes over his own beady dark eyes. (She was growing deeply, deeply afraid that the skin really _had_ belonged to Jerome, although logic told her this was impossible—he'd been dead for two years; he didn't _have_ skin anymore.)

"I don't want to keep watching this," Jane pushed.

"Then _don't!_" snapped Isabel, too on edge to watch her tone the way she normally would. "Turn away, go do something else, you don't _have_ to."

_But I do_. She didn't say the words, but Jane knew her well. She didn't leave, didn't speak a word or reproof, and after a moment, just slipped her hand into Isabel's. Isabel squeezed her hand tight, and they watched in silence as the imitator monologued, watched till gunfire sounded and a cop tackled the imposter right in front of the camera he'd been using to spread the word (_is that Jim Gordon?_ Isabel wondered. She couldn't tell, but during her acquaintance with Lee, she'd gotten a bead on him—she gathered that he basically _had_ to be on the scene of any major incident in the city, so she wouldn't rule it out), and the broadcast abruptly blue-screened.

It took hearing Jane's quiet, long sigh of relief to for Isabel to realize that _she_ wasn't breathing. She started up again, slowly, and Jane said, "Thank God that's over."

"Yeah," Isabel agreed, unconvinced (and _unconvincingly_, if the look Jane gave her was any indication). She took a moment to drag herself out of the peculiar funk, to crush down the anger and upset (and, strangely, _sadness_), and it took a little more effort because she was out of practice, but at length she looked at Jane gamely. "No need to let those assholes wreck our day, huh? C'mon, we still gotta go to McCreary's before hitting the movies."

That was far from the end of it, of course. An ugly feeling followed Isabel around the rest of the day (she couldn't help but think of it as _the specter of Jerome_, although that was ridiculous), and then the blackout rolled through Gotham while Isabel and Jane were at the movies, putting them out on the street in the dark, no news, no one in the know to tell them what was going on.

They'd barely gotten back home before there was a knock at the door. Isabel answered with her baseball bat, aware that it was foolish but also unwilling to potentially ignore neighbors who needed help, and was greeted with the unwelcome sight of a group of goth clowns, Jerome's "followers," back again.

"I told you before," she said, hefting the bat. "I'm not going to tell you again."

The group exchanged glances, then rushed her. She felt a hot rush of satisfaction when she whacked the first one across the head, unable in the heat of the moment to be worried about how _good_ it felt to dole out violence that felt justified, but it was short-lived—even without the leader, they outnumbered her four-to-one, and although Jane, to her credit, jumped on another with an unearthly scream, the guy tossed her aside easily. They had Isabel disarmed and immobilized in short notice, and she howled in rage, and Jane screamed for help, but it was no good—they half-dragged, half-carried her out through a building of people too scared to intervene.

It wasn't until she was in a van trapped between two clowns, driving through the dark city, that Isabel realized her approach of spitting and cursing wasn't doing anything but allowing them to play up their shtick, insane giggling and nonsense parroting and generally acting like senseless fools (she'd say one thing for Jerome: theatricality or not, she'd always believed he had a _brain_ in his head, that the wild shit he pulled was usually in pursuit of a _goal_ and wasn't just a poor substitute for a personality, which was more than she could say for his followers). She forced herself to calm down, focusing on the fact that she wasn't hurt or drugged to help her feel better. Then, making an effort to keep her voice level, hoping it would encourage her captors to act like _actual people_, she asked, "What is this? What do you want from me?"

The giggling just started up again, but the driver, at least, seemed willing to answer. "Not _us_," he said, on the verge of laughter just like the others. "_We_ don't want you. _Jerome_ does."

_Oh, for the love of_—"Jerome is _dead!_" she snapped, sick of this game, of the way it was interfering with _her life_ and safety, and the way it was stirring up strong emotions, thoughts and feelings she'd thought had long passed peacefully under the surface of her consciousness. She resented that she was being made to _think_ of him again, that for the first time in a _long_ time she couldn't get away with just placing the time she spent with him in a box in the corner of her mind, untouched because he was _dead_ and it _didn't matter anymore_.

(She couldn't help thinking about how he would react if he knew he had a cult. He definitely wouldn't feel the scorn and revulsion _she_ would feel if faced by a horde of jackasses in face paint claiming to be _in her image_. Knowing him, he would love it. He thrived on attention, it had turned out to be his Achilles' heel.)(She didn't _like_ that she was considering this, that she was picturing his face again.)

Of course, this declaration just kicked up more hyena howling from her captors. She tried one more time—"You guys know that jackass with the skin mask _isn't him_, right?"—but it didn't help a bit. She decided to save her breath for dealing with whoever was in charge. (She had no idea who that might be. Had the original imposter somehow escaped? Had some new acolyte stepped up to "be Jerome" in his place? Whoever it was wanted _her_, definitely because of her experience with the real Jerome, and she figured she needed to reserve as much patience as possible for dealing with him, because she _already_ wanted to knock him to the ground and kick his ribs to powder for being cool with _leading a Jerome-themed cult_.)

This resolution carried her through the city, into the Boardwalk Circus—which had been turned into a nightmare mirror of itself, with average citizens being beaten and tortured and probably killed, though Isabel's captors hurried her along too fast for her to get a good look at anything much. It carried her right up until she spotted the tall, slim figure all in white, back turned to her, but the stance, form, and fiery red hair were unmistakable, and she stopped dead in her tracks.

"What is—?" she began, the words almost inaudible, like they'd been forced out of her, and then her captors were hurrying her forward again, towards him. He had his arms spread out like a preacher, was bent slightly forward, talking to someone, and as she was conveyed nearer to him, she felt the shock _snap_ and vanish. She knew it wasn't really _gone_, but she'd always been good at repressing complicated emotions in order to tend to more immediate needs.

She was good at being adaptable.

She tore her arms from the clowns holding her—given that she hadn't fought them since they'd taken her from her apartment building, they weren't expecting it, and it was easy. Before they could grab her again, she was storming over towards the figure in white, ignoring the screams and chaos that made up the backdrop and instead calling out, practically _belting_ her words so he couldn't help but hear her. "Hey, _jackass!_ Nice pajamas!"

She was within five paces of him now. He turned. She stopped as abruptly as if she'd run into a brick wall, and blurted, "Holy _shit_, what happened to your _face_?"

Of course, she was figuring out what had happened even as she asked, her mind working overtime to make all the pieces of information she'd picked up over the day fit _just so_. The face-skin-mask she'd seen the imposter wearing _did_ belong to Jerome, after all, and now, it appeared, Jerome had taken it back—and if the industrial-strength staples holding his flesh to his skinned face weren't exactly an _ideal_ counter-option to reattachment surgery, they seemed to be doing an admirable job in the short-term. It was a fucking _bizarre_ idea, of course, _stapling_ your skin back on, and it looked painful—there had to be at least thirty little metal pins lining his face, the edge puckered and reddened between them—but he was, recognizably, _himself_.

Jerome looked at her, and then _looked_ at her, leaning back slightly so that when his gaze crawled from her toes to her head, she'd be fully aware of it. She realized uncomfortably at this point that they formed something of an inverse mirror image of one another—Isabel in black jacket over black tank and black skinny jeans tucked into black shitkicker boots, while Jerome looked ever the cult leader in pristine white all over, her skin warm brown, his cool white. It brought back to mind some of the feelings she'd had while stuck in that single room with no one but Jerome for company, feelings about them being opposite sides of the exact same coin, feelings she hadn't seen the use in revisiting in the time since he'd died.

And he _had _died, of that she was sure. She didn't think it was fair that he was looking at her again now, dragging all this back up into the open.

He didn't say anything to her right away, didn't answer her rather rude question, just turned to the little group to whom he'd been speaking before her arrival and said, "Show him a good time, huh? Ooh! Paint his face. Sad clown, am I right?"

His words made her focus on that little group, and she realized with a delayed sort of shock that although most of the throng consisted of his acolytes, there was a figure there that certainly didn't blend in—no zany hairstyle or clothes, no tattoos, no wild grin and lurid makeup: Bruce Wayne. If she hadn't been familiar with the boy's face _before_, she certainly had been after all the coverage of the gala where Jerome had targeted him, then died, and she was starting to get a deeply uncomfortable sense of déjà vu with all the similarities between that night and this one. Next thing she knew, _Barbara_ would show up.

Jerome's people had caught up to her by then, and grabbed her by the arms, like they planned to _hold her in place_ for their boss or some shit like that. _Over my dead body,_ Isabel thought, and making use of some of the self-defense classes she and Jane had seen fit to take in the interim years, she used her heavy boot heel to crush the instep of the one on her right, and as he howled and dropped her arm, she rammed her head back into the face of the one on her left—clumsily, and the contact made the back of her head sting, but she was willing to bet his broken nose hurt worse.

"Hands _off_ me," she snarled, whirling on them, ready to fight, and there were at least two more who looked grimly determined (if not eager) to come at her, but Jerome's laughter made them pause.

The sound had changed, no longer the rapid-fire, high pitched cackle she'd known—now it was slow, croaky, with short gaps of silence between each quiet laugh, more _intimidating_ than _manic_. She turned back to find him prowling near, revolver carelessly held in one hand, open knife more attentively in the other, and his eyes, bright, ringed beneath with red where his flayed flesh met thinner, undamaged skin, found hers.

She stood up tall, not for the first time resenting the three or so inches he had on her. He seemed to be aware of this; he bent gamely at the neck, coming down to her eyeline, and said, "_Isabel_, I presume."

His _voice_ was different too, raspy, and she felt her eyes reflexively travel to that spot on his neck that had been oozing blood last she saw it. The wound was still there—he'd been _dead_, it hadn't exactly had the chance to _heal_, but it was at least closed now, not bleeding but still a livid blood-red. She wondered if the knife to the throat had changed his voice permanently or if two years being dead had just put him out of practice talking. It got under her skin either way, how _different_ he seemed, despite the body being the same, which was probably why she fired back, "What, just because you've been _dead_ for a while you get to act like we don't know each other?"

He turned his head a bit, looking at her out of the corners of his eyes, like he was sizing her up. "Sor_ry_," he said lightly, not really sounding like he meant it. "You'll have to bear with me. Systems still coming back online—" And then he made a clicking, gagging sound deep in his throat, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he spasmed forward at the shoulders, abruptly enough that she thought he was going to pitch face-first onto the ground. She was half-stepping forward to catch him before remembering herself and remembering that he was _very well armed_, and two of his acolytes rushed past her to grab him instead.

One of those acolytes paid the price when Jerome's knife hand shot out and caught him low in the gut. Jerome lifted his head and met the guy's eye and laughed in his face, that slow creaking _ah-ah-ah_ that gave Isabel the _creeps_, and the guy _laughed back_ before falling to the boardwalk in a bloody slump.

"Where was I?" Jerome wondered out loud, staring into the middle distance as he held the bloodied knife out from his body. Another follower, without being asked, used his own shirt to wipe the blade clean, and Isabel wondered that _anyone_ was comfortable getting within arm's reach of Jerome after _that_.

"_Right_," he said without being told, his gaze shifting to Isabel again. "So we _know_ each other, huh?"

The implications of what he'd said, _systems coming back online_, finally caught up with her. She frowned. "You really don't remember, do you?" she asked before she could think better of it.

"It's coming back to me," he said. He stared at her for a moment, hard, like she was a complicated problem he was trying to solve. His gaze was sending little prickles of gooseflesh down the back of her neck, and it took her a second to put her finger on _why_, but then she realized that the look in his eyes had changed, too, no longer young and lively and careless. It wasn't just the gore surrounding them, either—the look in them was sort of like curiosity and was sort of like hunger, and wasn't exactly _either_, and was more unsettling than both.

Abruptly, he shook his head, eyes sliding briefly shut. "Having a hard time figuring _why,_ though," he added.

This was enough to give Isabel (who had been growing tense enough beneath his stare to start plotting out futile efforts to escape) pause. Watching him uncertainly, she prompted, "Why…?"

"Why I got you _out_," he said, waving his gun hand in an impatient little circle, _come on, keep up._ "What was special about _you_, Izzy?"

"Oh, great, glad you came out the other end of it all holding onto _that_ nickname," she grumbled.

That prompted something a little more familiar, a flash of genuine amusement gleaming in his eyes for a second before vanishing again, swallowed up by that empty need, and he went on as though she hadn't interrupted. "We were _friendly_, but not _friends_, I remember that."

"You're not really the _friends_ type," she commented.

He nodded, _sounds about right_, and added, "And you weren't my _girlfriend_, I would never have tied myself down like that—" She snorted despite herself, because as changed as he seemed, he was certainly still utterly full of himself—"although I seem to remember some… _amorous_ activity."

"Thanks for phrasing it so delicately," she said dryly. (She didn't actually give two shits. The only people around were his horde of clowns, and they'd given up any right to be taken into consideration the second they'd decided to _follow Jerome_.)

"You're not one of _them_," he said, his eyes still unblinkingly fixed on her, and although he made no indication, intuitively she understood him to be talking about the followers now.

"_God_, no."

"So… _what?_" he asked, getting impatient again. "What was the deal, huh?"

Her eyes went wide as she realized that he _actually_ wanted to know, wasn't just being coy, and unexpectedly, she laughed out loud. He tilted his head, eyes sharp and attentive and _hungry_, and she said, "Ohh, no. No, if you don't already know then there's absolutely _no way_ I'm going to walk you through it."

He raised his eyebrows, the stapled skin above them stretching and creasing as the muscles beneath it moved, and she winced. That had to hurt, right? The staples _had_ to be jabbing into him with every expression, every motion, and even if they _weren't,_ the face beneath the skin had to be just one great big screaming nerve ending at this point—unless death had numbed him to an extent, which: how would she know?

Jerome was approaching quick, lifting his gun hand (frankly, she was more afraid of the knife). She stepped backwards once, but then he was on her, the barrel of the gun jabbing into the underside of her chin as he looked down at her with wide eyes that didn't really reflect the grin his mouth was stretched into. He said, "Ah… a piece of _friendly advice_. Rethink that."

She wanted to laugh again, and was fairly sure he could tell just by the expression on her face. It was absurd, of course, foolish, but she couldn't help but mark the turnaround: the last time they'd spent a considerable amount of time together, _she'd_ wanted something from _him_. Granted, she doubted he would ever want _anything_ as much as she'd wanted a means of feeling at least _somewhat_ in control at the time, especially now that he'd come back, and come back _different_ somehow, but she still appreciated the role reversal.

Still, she didn't think it would be wise to defy him outright, not with a gun in her face (and the barrel was cool, which she wasn't sure was a good thing—it meant he hadn't been trigger-happy recently, but that _also_ meant he could just be itching to go). She waffled instead. "I promise you wouldn't believe me."

He poked her jaw, hard. "_Try_ me," he encouraged her.

It wasn't even that she _wouldn't_ (although that was certainly part of it)—it was more that she didn't even know what to _say._ What would that even sound like? _So, yeah, Jerome, it happened just like this: over the course of a four-day hostage-captor standoff, we discovered a mutual attraction, probably due to a background sort-of in common, and our differing approaches to coping with that background gave that attraction some extra spark, to the point where I didn't want to see you hurt despite everything, and I can't speak for you, but there had to be __**something**__ worthwhile there, because you helped me escape instead of killing me, or even just letting me go to my death, which I assume is a pretty significant act, coming from you._

It was all the truth, or at least as far as she understood it, but it would sound _ridiculous_—if not outright _pathetic_—trying to tell him that if he didn't remember any of it. She changed the subject, betting on Jerome's erratic attention span to keep her out of trouble, or at least put some distance between her and his questions.

"I think you should get to a hospital," she said.

He hadn't been expecting that. He frowned, and leaned back slightly, as though by getting a better look at her he could figure out what she was thinking. "Uh… what?"

_Oh, come on._ "What's the long-term plan for this, anyway?" she said, gesturing towards his face—she didn't touch it, didn't want the memory of the feel of the loose, dying skin against her fingertips.

He caught on fast. "Oh, but I thought I was doing _well_," he said earnestly.

She gave him a skeptical look—_you cannot be serious_. When he just responded with even wider eyes, going for _innocent_ (it didn't translate as well as it used to), she said, sharply, "You _know_ the _staples_ don't mean it's properly reattached. That skin's not going to take, it's gonna just _rot_ away eventually, but hey, good news, your _whole face_ will have gotten infected before that. If it hurts _now_, wait till you're oozing pus and fluids from every orifice."

"Fluids and _orifices,_ huh? Sounds like a party." He wrestled the gun into his pocket, which Isabel didn't think was an appropriate place to stash it, but her attention was diverted quickly enough when the knife replaced its position at her jaw. "Wanna make it a _double act?_" he asked, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

It was difficult to concentrate with the press of cold steel running along her skin, teasingly at the moment, but she could feel the edge of the knife, its sharpness—with just a few more ounces of pressure, the blade would cut. He was watching the motion of the blade, and she tracked his gaze, staring resolutely until he finally lifted his eyes to meet hers again, his alive with humor and malice.

"I don't think you want to share the glory, honestly," she told him.

He grinned at her, and even his _grin_ was different—still something he did to intimidate, coupled rather alarmingly with the tip of the knife pricking her skin, but the _joy_ of it was gone from his eyes, that ravenousness consuming it completely. When she didn't flinch or shy back, he tilted his head an inch to the side, and she felt _cold_ as the blade scored the thin skin lining her jawbone, the _sting_ following closely after.

She was frightened—she might not have been, with Jerome _before_, but this was an entirely different animal, someone who clearly couldn't give two shits about her, and she didn't think he'd hesitate to just off her like so much unwanted garbage the second he stopped feeling interested.

She followed her instinct, the only thing she _had_ at this point. She closed her eyes and sighed—not a pleasant sort of sigh. Bored, if anything.

Jerome quit cutting. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that his look had changed, a little confused, mostly calculating. Ignoring the trickle of blood she felt sliding down her chin, she asked, "Why is _Bruce Wayne_ here?"

Again, she'd gambled on him being more interested in his _own_ plans, his _own_ so-called brilliance and what _he_ was doing over whatever was going on with anyone else (and specifically, _her_), and it paid off. "Well," he said, casual as anything but lifting the knife enough that she couldn't even feel it anymore, "I was about to kill him when I died, figured I might as well tie up loose ends before moving forward, right?"

She found herself glaring at him. She had no great love for billionaires in general, had an ideological opposition to them much like the one she had to police, but Bruce was still a _kid_, sixteen years old at the _oldest_ and likely younger than that, and he may have been overprivileged and coddled, but kids didn't deserve adult-sized problems like being the target of _Jerome Valeska_, bar none. "He's a kid, Jerome," she said. "Pick on somebody your own size."

Jerome drew back, head ducked down so he could meet her on her eye level again. "Like you?"

At some point, her heart had started pounding double-time—she hadn't noticed it before that moment. "If that's what you need to do," she said, trying to sound casual.

Jerome twirled the knife in one hand, the blade marked with her blood spinning and glinting as it caught the light, his stare calculated, like he was seriously considering it—then he relaxed, bringing the knife back down all at once. "_Nah_," he said. "Fair fights are _boring_."

She decided to ignore the subtext there, that her-on-him would be a _fair fight_, and just said, "Picking on Bruce Wayne is old hat. Why don't you try something new?"

He actually scowled. "Have you _always_ been this much of a _nag?_"

She laughed, a quick burst, unapologetic at his characterization of her. "_Yes._"

His expression shifted several times in just a second or two; she saw _amusement_ and _incredulity_ and _anger_ among half a dozen other things that were too quick for her to identify, and then it settled on something casual, almost bored, and he shrugged. "Time for _new_ later," he said lazily. "This is my _rebirth_, Isabel. No better way to _set things off_ than to close out all my _unfinished business_ from before. Speaking of which."

He hefted the gun again, lifting his arm in the space between them, aiming the barrel directly between her eyes, and pulled back the hammer. On some level, Isabel understood that _this is it, this is the real thing_, but there was a sort of whiplash in Jerome changing gears so often in a mere five minutes, and it was hard for her to summon up the appropriate fear, despite the fact that she fully believed he would do it.

She didn't bother looking at the gun—it wouldn't exactly help at this point, anyway—staring right past it to focus on Jerome. He closed one eye, like he _needed_ to take careful aim at point blank range, and for a second everything was still—she couldn't even hear the madhouse in the background, everything else fading away.

"Then again," he said abruptly, clicking the hammer back to its neutral position and lowering the gun all at once, "I've always been a sucker for uncovering a _secret_." He stepped forward, and tapped the barrel of the revolver a few times against her temple, making her flinch. "We've got _time_," he crooned through the peculiar lockjaw he'd adopted to accommodate the tenuous hold of the skin covering his face.

He turned away abruptly then, started heading towards the little face-painting stand a few dozen yards away. She watched him go, feeling a sudden deep sense of panic settling in her chest, and maybe it was because she was afraid of what he was planning to do to Bruce Wayne, or maybe she just wasn't ready to see him leave after less than ten minutes of talking to him (_she'd watched him fucking die_), because she called out: "_Jerome!_"

He tilted his head back and groaned, _aughh_, making it _clear_ how irritated he was by her interference, but it was at least half a performance, because he turned back around, looking expectantly at her, _may I help you?_

She hesitated, tongue-tied, but it lasted for less than a few seconds, and then she blurted out the first thing that came to mind—possibly the most intrusive thing she could ask. "What was it like, being dead?"

That gave him pause. "_Huh_," he said at length, tilting his head to the side, and then strolled towards her, taking his time, not a care in the world. He didn't stop a polite four inches away this time, either, crowded up to her until their bodies were touching—lightly, but the threat was there—and he leaned down to growl his answer in her ear, first drawing a slow, almost wheezing breath.

"It took… a _long_ time," he said simply, and _lingered_, and he was close enough now that she could smell him, could smell the grave on him still, formaldehyde underscored with the faint, sweet smell of decay. After a second, she felt the press of his mouth on her cheek, brief and damp, then he drew back, giving her a meaningful look.

Except she didn't know what it was supposed to _mean_. She felt her brow crease, betraying her confusion, and, mindful of the fact that he'd apparently told her in confidence (it was probably a trick, like most things he did, but she didn't see the drawbacks in playing along), she practically whispered when she asked, "What does that—does that mean you were… _aware_? The whole time?"

He just raised his eyebrows conspiratorially, then turned away from her, nonchalant, resuming his trek towards the face-painting tent.

"_Jerome!_" she called after him, feeling another powerful flare of that anger that had only resurfaced _today_. "I'm not _done_ with you!"

Maybe it was hubris, confidence that came from having faced death at least three times in ten minutes and coming out on the right side every time, but any chance she could get at keeping him from turning his attention _outward_, where he could wreak more havoc, she was going to take. It didn't matter, anyway. _Jerome_, it appeared, was done with _her_, didn't even look back at her, just lifted his free hand and spun his index finger in an abbreviated circle and called out, "Shut her up."

She didn't even see the blow coming. One second she was upright, watching his retreating back, all in white, and the next, everything was black.

* * *

The rest of the night was a blur. Isabel wasn't out for long, but even after she regained consciousness, she had trouble holding on to memories, and fighting back or running away was out of the question. She remembered Jerome's circus act, to an extent, had been propped up by his followers somewhere ringside—remembered him theatrically spanking his own ringmaster-clad ass just for hoots and hollers, remembered Bruce Wayne stung up in the big ring, remembered Jerome stuffing the cannon with increasingly sharp and shrapnel-y objects.

She remembered yelling, gunfire, chaos. She lost track of Bruce and Jerome both at some point, remembered realizing that the police were there, and although she didn't have the presence of mind to think it at the time, she would later be glad that she hadn't gotten mistaken for one of Jerome's followers (although her dazed, unmoving state probably helped with that, as well as her relatively conservative appearance—conservative, anyway, compared to the cult of Jerome) and that she hadn't gotten caught in the crossfire.

She was fuzzy on the details of _why _and_ how_, but she remembered Jim Gordon punching Jerome's face-skin-mask off. She _wished_ she could purge that image from her mind, but feared it was there forever.

Jim had been the one to recognize her, actually, to ultimately pull her out, and she couldn't even summon the usual righteous indignation she usually felt when confronted with his existence (especially after what he'd done to Lee), and even managed to thank him, quietly, once they were back at the station.

Lee was there, of course, insisted on personally seeing to Isabel, treating her cut face and head trauma with all the anxious concern of an older sister, which, in Isabel's weakened state, touched her greatly. (Aside from Jane, who repaid Isabel's loyalty with the sort that compelled her to physically attack strange-looking attackers despite her inhibiting fear, Isabel didn't have many people who cared like that for her.) She told Isabel about her confrontation with Jerome right after he'd been resurrected, about her attempts to contact her, her fear when she'd reached nothing but dead ends, and finally, her relief when Jim had found Isabel alive. Isabel listened, feeling a sort of balm in Lee's irritation, and finally, Lee devolved to just _complaining_.

"Can't _believe_ it," Lee groused as she checked Isabel's eyes. "Of _all the people_ to _come back to life_—it had to be _him?_ Satan's little brother?"

Isabel giggled. Lee looked at her like she had lost her mind, and Isabel shrugged, _head injury_, a nonverbal excuse which Lee seemed to accept easily enough. "He's obnoxious enough that it makes sense," Isabel said.

"It _is_ Gotham," Lee allowed. "Weird things happen every day here." She pulled off her gloves, clasped her hands over her knees, and fixed Isabel with a long, worried look. "How are _you_?"

Isabel raised her eyebrows. "You tell me, Doc."

"No, I mean—well, obviously you're going to need to take it easy for a while, you're not concussed but I still don't want to take chances, they _pistol-whipped_ you in the back of the skull and that's no joke. But I mean mentally. _Emotionally._ Last time you saw him, he was one of your _kidnappers_. How are you feeling about the fact that he's back now?"

Because Isabel loved Lee (and that was obvious to her now, in her injured, rather simpler state—she _loved_ her, loved her for her heart, her devotion to the city, her energy and ability to be the things that Isabel _wanted_ to be), she took a moment to actually consider, to try to tell the truth. "Scared," she said at length.

Lee reached out, grabbed her by the hands. Isabel squeezed her hands back, appreciating the attempt at reassurance, even if she didn't _feel_ reassured. "They took him to the hospital under heavy guard," Lee said firmly. "The second he can be moved, he's headed to Arkham. There's no Theo Galavan waiting around to bust him out this time. They'll lock him up and throw away the key."

Isabel knew Lee was trying to make her feel better, and didn't see the point in bringing up that old conversation she'd had with Jerome, in which he'd confided that Arkham was just another playground for him, nothing _close_ to a proper jail. She mustered a smile, squeezed Lee's hands again, and said, "I know. But he was _dead_. And now he's not. It… opens things back up. You know?"

Lee stared at her for a long few seconds, nodding, the understanding on her face breaking Isabel's heart. Finally, she released Isabel's hands and rolled away from her to a work table, finding a pen and a notepad and writing something out with a few resolute strokes of ink. "I'm going to give you a number to a therapist I know. I don't want you to worry about money," she said, even as Isabel started to speak up, to protest. "I'll work something out for you. But if Jerome's going to be alive—even in prison—this is something you _need_, Isabel. Trust me." She ripped the page from the pad and rolled back to Isabel, holding the sheet out between two fingertips.

Isabel looked at her, doubtful. Lee raised her eyebrows and added, "You _thought_ you had closure and that just got ripped away from you in a _big_ way. You probably should have been seeing someone before, but you _definitely_ need it now. Please." She waved the slip of paper at her. "For me. Please."

Isabel took the paper. She couldn't stomach the thought of Lee worrying about her, and was rewarded with Lee's radiant smile, prompting a smile in return, despite the roiling disquiet in Isabel's chest.

"I'm going to write you a script for some painkillers," Lee said, rolling away again to her worktable. "Your head is going to give you trouble for a few days—I want you to take some time off, _no arguing_," she added, raising her voice to cut off Isabel's immediate protests. "I know you're young, you think you can do whatever, but downtime is _vital_ with injuries like these. The work will go on without you. I'll make some calls; you'll be fine."

Isabel was starting to feel embarrassed at the level of attention and concern she was being given, and dipped her chin, tucked the therapist's number into her pocket. "Kay," she said softly.

After a few second's silence, she heard Lee, rolling back in her direction, and then felt her fingers on her chin, tilting her head up to meet her eyes. Lee's expression, kind and sympathetic, just broke Isabel's heart a little bit more.

"Don't try to handle this alone," she said softly. "You've got support. Jerome doesn't win just because he came back from the dead."

Isabel strangled the impulse to laugh before it could so much as show on her face. She thought about Jerome, about the horror of his life and his death and then his resurrection, how it was all marked with blood and guts and death and _hate_, and about how she _understood_ it, how a few different steps in her own life would have taken her to the same path. Lee could never know that, though—her ex-fiancé could _definitely_ never know that, would lock her up in the funny farm the second he _suspected_ any of her similarities to Jerome, Jane could never know that, _Gotham City_ could not know that. Her only option was to keep walking the path.

"I will," she said. "I know he doesn't," she added, and managed to look like she was telling the truth.

**End**

* * *

**final note** \- that's it for now, but I fully intend to write one or two more fics, covering Arkham Jerome, Season Four Jerome, and more beyond all that. Belated reviews and further yelling on this story are entirely welcome, they have a tendency to spur me on as I write the next draft. Thank you so much for reading! See you next time.


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